(but (also))

"in order to see the world and grasp it as paradoxical, we must break with our familiar acceptance of it"

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (via man-of-prose)

"I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own."

What I Believe, Bertrand Russell (via man-of-prose)

farewell-kingdom:

Paintings by Joel Rea

oil on canvas

a-simplelimabean:

so my friend killed a moth and he kind of just

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Carl Sagan (via foundhound)

(Source: illuminatedbeing)

invisiblestories:

Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature

(Image: Gilbert Garcin)

Nightjars fly to the junipers and pines,
more skins of bark,
loaned out lungs unhinged
from our poor creaking cavity.
A fearless, unfamiliar song uncorks the forest—
our exhale

without the bodily burden.
We are only the lookout. We can’t support
the arctic tern over the sea

on her impossible polar journey,
but we love
that she’s tireless and we praise
ourselves for making it through
the miscarriage and our mother’s death.

A glossy ibis wades the freshwater—
our father’s roaming, wasted life.

Silent thrum, a humming bird
pierces the plastic flowers
we draw around us like hope.
With stained necks,
as if someone slit their delicate throats,
they rise like ghosts.

We feel our bones are hollow
and collapsible. They tell us

we will never die.
One in four people are birders. One in four
wait for a Great Bird to cast his shadow,
the way a distant cloud shades
a distant mountain
and we can see it’s happening. We can see
outside the realm
of dark, for once,
we are not under it.

“Why We Bird” by Brittney Scott (New Republic)

"I am not of the opinion that one can ever lack the power to express perfectly what one wants to write or say. Observations on the weakness of language, and comparisons between the limitations of words and the infinity of feelings, are quite fallacious. The infinite feeling continues to be as infinite in words as it was in the heart. What is clear within is bound to become so in words as well. This is why one need never worry about language, but at sight of words may often worry about oneself. After all, who knows within himself how things really are with him? This tempestuous or floundering or morass-like inner self is what we really are, but by the secret process by which words are forced out of us, our self-knowledge is brought to light, and though it may still be veiled, yet it is there before us, wonderful or terrible to behold."

Franz Kafka, from Diaries (via violentwavesofemotion)

weissewiese:

Emma Aylor, a review of Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

Sugar was, somehow, one of my first experiences of belief. As a child I tried to read the Bible my father believed in; I was baptized Episcopalian; my parents kept the candle from that baptism but I never lit it again. I chose a different water, one I couldn’t define but which meant more to me in that not-knowing. I read poetry and walked, I suppose, and hoped that this could bring me something like religion.

I first read “Write Like a Motherfucker” sometime in summer, two years ago, mid-college and having met people that were, to me, something of some god. Our commandment was being brave and ourselves; our sacrament dancing outside on weeknights in wet grass. “The unifying thing,” as Sugar wrote Elissa Bassist, “is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve.” We were one another’s unifying things.

I became, with all this help, a sudden person of nerve. […] Sugar is so important because she witnessed my own becoming. She told me to fight, to feel, to bend, to give a fuck.

abstractnerd:

Neurons-in-the-brain by BWJones on Flickr.

From: prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2013/02/this-is-your-bra…