see the horizon over there?

"Charlie Brown: What can you do when you don't fit in? What can you do when life seems to be passing you by?
Lucy: Follow me. I want to show you something. See the horizon over there? See how big this world is? See how much room there is for everybody? Have you ever seen any other worlds?
Charlie Brown: No.
Lucy: As far as you know, this is the only world there is, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: There are no other worlds for you to live in, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: You were born to live in this world, right?
Charlie Brown: Right.
Lucy: WELL LIVE IN IT THEN! Five cents please."
— Charles Schultz

"i vacillate between two styles, two worlds, two attitudes toward life..."

"... if i could succeed in analyzing them, i think i would be able to shake off all these doubts.
characteristics of the first type are: discipline, ruggedness, reserve, restraint, exclusivity, profundity. the effect does not lie on the surface; a first look leaves one cold, but gradually something is revealed to the beholder, by delayed action, as it were. these are probably the essential characteristics of ancient greek and roman art.
the characteristics of the other type, then, are diametrically opposed... anything supernatural, gigantic, dionysian, intoxicated, enraptured, dynamic. the effect is direct, abrupt, casting an immediate spell, imprisoning one, "bedazzling the senses," overwhelming...
given my strong propensity in painting as in life for the rococo, wouldn't the best antidote be to impose the most rigid discipline on myself? but the result would be stylized, sacral art, that other pitfall...
everything should merge into one great current. mysticism, the primitive, the most recent, greece, gothic-all the elements must be drawn upon." ~from oskar schlemmer's diary, september 1915

so true

"if you're lucky enough to have a project in mind, most of the things that happen around you are relevant and fall into place as if destined to do so. your whole life turns into a kind of beehive where every cell instead of staying stupid and empty is filled with the honey of events that confirm either your good luck or fate in general." ~julia kristeva

torn

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
— E. B. White

"at every instant i am attentive...

...and when i have the time
i listen to the world as a symphony
and though i am sure that i cannot direct its movements in any way
nevertheless, it is within my power to manipulate
within myself certain devices or appliances
similar to amplifiers, dials, screens, diaphragms
much in use, lately, in certain fields." ~ francis ponge

"it's quite funny with memories and sights and sounds.

you sometimes think you can stop seeing and listening, but memory keeps playing its gramophone records without a break. you cannot close your eyes because the images unfold in one enormous reel after the other. my grandfather would have said that the sound lies in the brain in a horizontal line, like records, while images stand up vertically like film reels. then they mesh into each other in some wonderful interplay. sometimes it's only sounds and sometimes it's just pictures and now and then it is synchronized. but most of the time the projectionist is drunk and without judgement. he refuses to work at all for some people and for others he works overtime." ~reidar jonsson; "my life as a dog"

“At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman..."

"... and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise... that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd.”
~Albert Camus



please visit the original images here: 1. the answer to, 2. Processionals on Watch

2 gifts from swissmiss

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

- Goethe

boy, did i need this quote today. thanks, swissmiss.

also for the flying robert, one of those objects i would very much like to have.

"the struggle of literature...

...is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary."
~italo calvino, "the literature machine"

image from here.