In 1966, while leafing through an obscure book, a 19-year-old Japanese aspiring poet by the name of Setsuo Yazaki discovered a poem that stopped him up short with its staggering generosity of empathy and existential truth conferred with great simplicity: BIG CATCH At sunrise, glo … | Continue reading
“Those people who see clearly the necessity of changed thinking must themselves undertake the discipline of thinking in new ways and must persuade others to do so.” | Continue reading
A song of praise for life and “the smallest possible once before once.” | Continue reading
“Immortality is not a matter of more or less time.” | Continue reading
“We need a better word than chance… To go all the way form a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical t… | Continue reading
The metaphysical made physical in a symphonic celebration of imagination, collaboration, and the human heart. | Continue reading
“For this we go out dark nights, searching… for signs of unseen things… Let there be swarms of them, enough for immortality, always a star where we can warm ourselves.” | Continue reading
“The over-all number of minds is just one.” | Continue reading
Wisdom on the elementary particles of the creative life and our shared humanity from Alain de Botton, Brené Brown, Elizabeth Alexander, and other visionaries of our time. | Continue reading
A look into “the very heart of nature’s double nature.” | Continue reading
“Mingle the starlight with your lives, and you won’t be fretted by trifles.” | Continue reading
“Every song I’ve ever written has been absolute torture… except for the ten or so songs the gods give you and that come out of nowhere.” | Continue reading
“These are the times in life — when nothing happens — but in quietness the soul expands.” | Continue reading
“…so brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.” | Continue reading
“Trees are an invitation to think about time and to travel in it the way they do, by standing still and reaching out and down.” | Continue reading
“The more a creature’s life is worth, the less of it is alive.” | Continue reading
How flowers gave rise to life on Earth and made possible the human consciousness that came to see a world “thronged only with Music.” | Continue reading
How flowers gave rise to life on Earth and made possible the human consciousness that came to see a world “thronged only with Music.” | Continue reading
“It is through story… that we can distinguish what is true, and that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges… | Continue reading
How to keep your soul from leaving you. | Continue reading
“As long as space and time divide you from anyone you love… love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.” | Continue reading
Trees, hummingbirds, snails, Stoicism, storytelling, Orwell’s roses, the crucible of consciousness, the end of the universe, and more trees. | Continue reading
A forgotten visionary of rare talent and solemn tenderness. | Continue reading
“To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again in the storms that make life possible.” | Continue reading
How Victorian astronomy helped decode the secret language of the seas. | Continue reading
“Your imagination… is mostly an accidental dance between collected memory and influence… a construction that awaits spiritual ignition.” | Continue reading
“Whosoever… is overrun with solitariness, or carried away with pleasing melancholy and vain conceits… or crucified with worldly care, I can prescribe him no better remedy thanR… | Continue reading
A posy of subtle illumination from the garden of life. | Continue reading
“Nothing in the upper world can compare with the luxury of this nether realm of the sea, with its colors, its atmosphere of mystery, of poise, and tranquility.” | Continue reading
“How can a creature who will certainly die have an understanding of things that will exist forever?” | Continue reading
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.” | Continue reading
“Let them not say: we did not see it. We saw.” | Continue reading
“It has no shape but can take any shape… You can touch it, but you cannot hold it… It can slip through your fingers, like it’s nothing at all. But life would be unthinkable … | Continue reading
Life-tested wisdom on how to live from James Baldwin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Leo Tolstoy, Seneca, Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman, Viktor Frankl, Rachel Carson, and Hannah Arendt. | Continue reading
“Also: This is it.” | Continue reading
From the Stoics to the snails, by way of music, matter, and the mind. | Continue reading
“A great deal of our onslaught on Mother Nature is not really lack of intelligence but a lack of compassion… True wisdom requires both thinking with our head and understanding with our … | Continue reading
“How is it that I seem to be this Margaret Fuller? What does it mean? What shall I do about it?” | Continue reading
“Ultimately, we are puppets of both pain and pleasure, occasionally made free by our creativity.” | Continue reading
“Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster… Since finitude defines our lives… livi… | Continue reading
From the river to the Milky Way, by way of trees, geese, and unsung heroes. | Continue reading
An uncommonly original and tenderhearted celebration of how an artist becomes an artist. | Continue reading
“Perhaps dreams are an arena that can enable supracognitive powers to perform calculations and perceptions of reality that may be incomprehensible in our wake state.” | Continue reading
“Our first questions about the value of a book, of a human being, or a musical composition are: Can they walk? Even more, can they dance?” | Continue reading
Two of humanity’s greatest minds explore the parallels between spacetime and psyche, the atomic nucleus and the self. | Continue reading
“What is it that makes it possible to do the work that is of highest value to others and one’s central purpose in life? It may appear — to others, sometimes even to oneself — trivial, irrelev… | Continue reading
“There is no pit you cannot climb out of provided you make the right effort at the right place… do the next thing with diligence and devotion.” | Continue reading
Uncommon consolation from the body to the soul. | Continue reading