vol1brooklyn:

Kraus is the type of soul that Henry David Thoreau would have enjoyed, a guy who is a savant in what the 19th century transcendentalist poet and philosopher referred to as the “art of walking.” But while Thoreau concerned himself with the natural surroundings of his native Massachusetts, Lewis-Kraus focuses on a mix of family-inflicted mental maladies, existential boredom, and good old-fashioned shpilkes. (via Roads to Somewhere: Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ “A Sense of Direction” Reviewed | Vol. 1 Brooklyn)

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.431

"Wittgenstein argues that language has an underlying logical structure, a structure that provides the limits of what can be said meaningfully, and therefore the limits of what can be thought. The limits of language, for Wittgenstein, are the limits of philosophy. Much of philosophy involves attempts to say the unsayable: “what can we say at all can be said clearly”, he argues. Anything beyond that—religion, ethics, aesthetics, the mystical—cannot be discussed. They are not in themselves nonsensical, but any statement about them must be."

Ludwig Wittgenstein

"In the book, generalizing from his own experience and research, he affirmed that “the life force may be the least understood force on earth” and that “human beings are not locked into fixed limitations. The quest for perfectibility is not a presumption or a blasphemy but the highest manifestation of a great design."

NORMAN COUSINS: EDITOR AND WRITER

minusmanhattan:

Beasts of Burden by Jamie Campbell.

"A common summary of his argument is that meaning is use—words are not defined by reference to the objects they designate, nor by the mental representations one might associate with them, but by how they are used. For example, this means there is no need to postulate that there is something called good that exists independently of any good deed."

Philosophical Investigations

"Life is an adventure in forgiveness."

Norman Cousins

"One of the things I hate most about popular art (books, films) is the lack of ambiguity. Or worse, people’s perception that ambiguity is somehow unfulfilling. Real life could not be any more ambiguous. We go out in the world everyday and are met head-on with gray uncertainty and there is something beautiful and transcendent about that. I don’t know why people want to look for clarity in art. It isn’t there and it shouldn’t be. It isn’t anywhere. If you boil a person down to being either “good” or “bad”? Where’s the fun in that?"

On Slacker Novels and Killing Darlings: Kris D’Agostino | Vol. 1 Brooklyn

YACHT - I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground Cover) →

Sigh.

"In social dancing, the follow role automatically gains a benefit, by making hundreds of split-second decisions as to what to do next. As I mentioned on this page, women don’t “follow”, they interpret the signals their partners are giving them, and this requires intelligence and decision-making, which is active, not passive. This benefit is greatly enhanced by dancing with different partners, not always with the same fellow. With different dance partners, you have to adjust much more and be aware of more variables."

Dancing Makes You Smarter

An interesting argument for multiple partners (i.e., promiscuity?)…

"I have found the thing that captures my imagination and I have faith that it will take me somewhere meaningful."

Malcolm Gladwell

(from Charlie Rose - A conversation with Malcolm Gladwell)

"I can’t tell anyone how to write a screenplay because anything of value you might do comes from you. The way I work is not the way you work, and the whole point of any creative act is that. What I have to offer is me. What you have to offer is you. And if you offer yourself with authenticity and generosity, I will be moved."

Charlie Kaufman Gives 70-Minute Screenwriting Lecture - NoFilmSchool

"The colony was without an executioner, and no white man could be found who was willing to accept the office. As every well-regulated government must have an official executioner, it was decided finally by the council to force it upon a negro blacksmith renowned for his nerve and strength, named Jeannot, belonging to the Company of the Indies. He was summoned and made a free man at the same time. The stalwart black giant started back in anguish and horror. “What! cut off the heads of people who have never done me any harm?” He prayed, he wept; but saw at last that there was no escape for him, that his masters were inflexible. “Very well,” he said, rising from his knees, “only wait a moment.” He ran to his cabin, seized a hatchet with his left hand, laid his right on a block of wood and cut it off. Returning, without a word he exhibited his bloody stump to the gentlemen of the council. With one cry, it is said, they sprang to his relief, and his freedom was given him."

New Orleans, The Place and the People • Chapter 5

"One of the things that you’re not really in control of — apart from everything — is your smell,” he said. “Different things in your life make you smell different, and a combination of coming back from Hollywood with a much more directed sense of what I wanted and then meeting Emma and being, I think, a less anxious person in consequence, was not coincidentally when I started to get more interesting work."

Julian Fellowes - The Creator of ‘Downton Abbey’ - NYTimes.com

I think the importance of smell cannot be overrated! I’m not kidding.

"Spiritual Midwifery” is a heady dispatch from the Farm’s midwifery practice around 1975. It tells of how Gaskin and other women discovered that birth could be a euphoric experience, a way of accessing a uniquely female power. In first-person anecdotes of births — “I began to rush and everything got psychedelic” is a typical description — the book shows vaginal, unmedicated birth to be an unparalleled opportunity for transcendence and communion."

Ina May Gaskin and the Battle for at-Home Births - NYTimes.com