14 October 2012
'i recall an august afternoon in chicago in 1973 when i took my daughter, then seven, to see what georgia o'keeffe had done with where she had been. one of the vast o'keeffe 'sky above clouds' canvases floated over the back stairs in the chicago art institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. 'who drew it,' she whispered after a while. i told her. 'i need to talk to her,' she said finally.
my daughter was making, that day in chicago, an entirely unconscious but quite basic assumption about people and the work they do. she was assuming that the glory she saw in the work reflected a glory in its maker, that the painting was the painter as the poem is the poet, that every choice one made alone - every word chosen or rejected, every brush stroke laid or not laid down - betrayed one's character.'
/ excerpt from the essay 'georgia o'keeffe' from the white album by joan didion
my daughter was making, that day in chicago, an entirely unconscious but quite basic assumption about people and the work they do. she was assuming that the glory she saw in the work reflected a glory in its maker, that the painting was the painter as the poem is the poet, that every choice one made alone - every word chosen or rejected, every brush stroke laid or not laid down - betrayed one's character.'
/ excerpt from the essay 'georgia o'keeffe' from the white album by joan didion
05 October 2012
04 October 2012
'for, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. and all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. and in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!'
/ fyodor dostoyevsky, white nights: and other stories
my birthday is in two days
/ fyodor dostoyevsky, white nights: and other stories
my birthday is in two days
02 October 2012
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