vessels of belief
A dragonfly molting a final time as it breaches the pondwater portal between nymph and adult so that its iridescent wings can at last unfurl. A hatchling pipping inside an egg, using its beak to fracture the only world it has ever known. A snake growing a new skin under the translucent specter of the old, scraping against stone to create a tear so... See more
Processual Biology: You Aren’t a Being, You’re a Process | Atmos
I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live... See more
Maria Popova • Live the Questions: Rilke on Embracing Uncertainty and Doubt as a Stabilizing Force
For the awakened individual, however, life begins now , at any and every moment; it begins at the moment when he realizes that he is part of a great whole, and in the realization becomes himself whole. In the knowledge of limits and relationships he discovers the eternal self, thenceforth to move with obedience and discipline in full freedom.
Maria Popova • The Wisdom of the Heart: Henry Miller on the Art of Living
Life, as we all know, is conflict, and man, being part of life, is himself an expression of conflict. If he recognizes the fact and accepts it, he is apt, despite the conflict, to know peace and to enjoy it. But to arrive at this end, which is only a beginning (for we haven’t begun to live yet!), a man has got to learn the doctrine of acceptance,... See more
Maria Popova • The Wisdom of the Heart: Henry Miller on the Art of Living
The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis . One can dance to sorrow or... See more
Maria Popova • The Wisdom of the Heart: Henry Miller on the Art of Living
Henry Miller
To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the... See more
Maria Popova • A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves
Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found. It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it’s where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it... See more
Maria Popova • A Field Guide to Getting Lost: Rebecca Solnit on How We Find Ourselves
“The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.”
―
Anne Carson,
Eros the Bittersweet
―
Anne Carson,
Eros the Bittersweet