I write with experiences in mind, but I don’t write about them, I write out of them.
John Ashbery (via theparisreview)
Maurice Ravel | “Noctuelle,” (Night Moths) from Miroirs (Reflections), 1905. Thank you, amare-habeo.
The capital-T Truth is about life before death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
“This is water.”
“This is water.”
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.
David Foster Wallace. Today in The River.
Saskatchewan, Canada. Stunning. Thank you, kateoplis.
Olive Cotton, Grass at Sundown, 1939.
Courtesy of Caravan of Dreams.
It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.
The frontier of our world is not far away; it doesn’t run along the horizon or in the depths. It glimmers faintly close by, in the twilight of the nearest surroundings; out of the corner of our eye we can always glimpse another world, without realizing it.
Michal Ajvaz, The Other City (Thank you, mythologyofblue)
Alfred Eisenstaedt working in cathedral on assignment, Lourdes, France, 1958. Thank you, killerbeesting & wait-what?.
No particular thought can be mind’s natural state, only silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. When the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience, or, rather, every experience happens against the background of silence.
Nisargadatta Maharaj (Yes, thank you, silencesounds)
