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The Marginalian

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The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
a year ago
114

The Paradox of Free Will

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a year ago
The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
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The Marginalian
The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul "Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
a year ago
98

The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
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The Marginalian
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone "The people we love are built into us."
a year ago
92

May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The people we love are built into us."
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The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe How to bear the gravity of being.
a year ago
89

Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe

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a year ago
How to bear the gravity of being.
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The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness "Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
a year ago
87

The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only unconditional surrender leads to real emptiness, and from that place of emptiness I can be prolific and free."
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The Marginalian
What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization "Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous...
a year ago
86

What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but... the prime moral privilege."
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The Marginalian
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the... Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
a year ago
84

What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the Universe

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
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The Marginalian
Batter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Our Your Own Heart There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of...
6 months ago
78

Batter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Our Your Own Heart

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of the heart graver than making another our higher power. This may seem inevitable — because to love is always to see the divine in each other, because all love is a yearning for the...
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The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
9 months ago
77

The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
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The Marginalian
We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life... "Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
a year ago
76

We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life Alive

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
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The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song "When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
7 months ago
76

Let the Last Thing Be Song

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
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The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
8 months ago
76

Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
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The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison "We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
10 months ago
76

The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos."
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The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain "Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
10 months ago
76

The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
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The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence "We make our lives by what we love."
9 months ago
75

Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"We make our lives by what we love."
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The Marginalian
On Change and Denial "It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
8 months ago
75

On Change and Denial

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
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The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep "It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
7 months ago
74

What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
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The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being "You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky...
9 months ago
74

What It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky to roam at will through all the far provinces of light."
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The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
73

Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
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The Marginalian
Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the... “Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning...
10 months ago
73

Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the Moon Is Leaving Us

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean...
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The Marginalian
William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships "Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
a year ago
72

William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
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The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
72

The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
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The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to... "Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
9 months ago
72

On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to Change Your Mind

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
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The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
8 months ago
72

Befriending a Blackbird

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
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The Marginalian
Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love "Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
a year ago
71

Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
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The Marginalian
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our... "Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his...
a year ago
71

Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our Most Destructive Emotion

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his might revealing the extent of his degradation."
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The Marginalian
How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty "In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often...
a year ago
70

How to Love the World More: George Saunders on the Courage of Uncertainty

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."
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The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
6 months ago
70

The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
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The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection “To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
9 months ago
70

Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
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The Marginalian
Love Anyway You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the...
11 months ago
70

Love Anyway

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway...
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The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
69

Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
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The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply... "A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
10 months ago
69

Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized as mutually dependent."
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The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential... "To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
69

Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential Longing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic problem of life."
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The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success “You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
8 months ago
69

John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
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The Marginalian
Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing “The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a...
9 months ago
69

Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a truth nowhere more bittersweet than in the creature whose body is the oldest unchanged musical instrument on Earth: a tiny mandolin silent for most of its existence, then sonorous with...
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The Marginalian
Poetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder "The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our...
a year ago
69

Poetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our image of our nature and our real nature."
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The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation "There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
8 months ago
68

On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
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The Marginalian
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
12 months ago
68

Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
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The Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
a year ago
68

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
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The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and... "While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
11 months ago
68

The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and Compulsory Coupledom

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them."
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The Marginalian
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and... "Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels;...
a year ago
68

Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and Seeing the Heart of Reality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent."
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The Marginalian
John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding... "The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and...
9 months ago
68

John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and life's challenges."
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The Marginalian
The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure... "We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a...
7 months ago
67

The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure for Conflict

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a biological and a social one. Each of us has had many authors, and each of us is engaged, for better or worse, in that same authorship. We could say that the human race is a great...
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The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
67

Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
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The Marginalian
The Broadest Portal to Joy "Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
a year ago
67

The Broadest Portal to Joy

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually."
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The Marginalian
Lichens and the Meaning of Life "We are lichens on a grand scale."
a year ago
67

Lichens and the Meaning of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We are lichens on a grand scale."
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The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of... To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
8 months ago
67

Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of Belonging

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
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The Marginalian
The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect "Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of...
7 months ago
67

The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
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The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
66

Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
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The Marginalian
Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem? When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death,...
7 months ago
66

Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem?

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death, an abandonment, a promise broken, a kindness withheld — we tend to cope in one of two ways: We question our own sanity, assuming the outside world coherent and our response a form...
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The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair "To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
66

Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
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The Marginalian
2,000 Years of Kindness From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
a year ago
66

2,000 Years of Kindness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
From Marcus Aurelius to Einstein, poets and philosophers on the deepest wellspring of our humanity.
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The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning "Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
6 months ago
66

We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
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The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone "An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
8 months ago
66

The Pleasure of Being Left Alone

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
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The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
10 months ago
66

The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
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The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine "In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
7 months ago
65

Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
"In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what poems are, or forget."
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The Marginalian
Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality "We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
a year ago
65

Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
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The Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
a year ago
65

Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border."
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The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd... "Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
10 months ago
65

Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd on the Uncomfortable Path to Wholeness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in is."
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The Marginalian
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of... "We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for...
a year ago
65

An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of Connection

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for friendship."
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The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It "Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
a year ago
64

The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
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The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
64

Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
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The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem "I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
a year ago
64

The Life of Trees: A Poem

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
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The Marginalian
The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
a year ago
64

The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
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The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong "You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
64

Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
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The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
63

O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
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The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken "The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
63

Let Your Heart Be Broken

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
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The Marginalian
Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love "All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building...
a year ago
63

Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms."
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The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and... A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
11 months ago
63

Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and Illustrated by Artist Nikki McClure

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
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The Marginalian
Do Not Spare Yourself The only thing more dangerous than wanting to save another person — a dangerous desire too often...
a month ago
63

Do Not Spare Yourself

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
The only thing more dangerous than wanting to save another person — a dangerous desire too often mistaken for love — is wanting to save yourself, to spare yourself the disappointment and heartbreak and loss inseparable from being a creature with hopes and longings constantly...
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The Marginalian
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love "Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both...
a year ago
63

How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged."
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The Marginalian
Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity "The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
8 months ago
62

Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
"The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
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The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
a year ago
62

The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
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The Marginalian
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how...
11 months ago
62

Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with life...
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The Marginalian
Youth and Age: Kahlil Gibran on the Art of Becoming A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what...
a year ago
62

Youth and Age: Kahlil Gibran on the Art of Becoming

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great."
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The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
11 months ago
62

Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
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The Marginalian
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism "Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
a year ago
61

Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
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The Marginalian
No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life "We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
9 months ago
61

No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
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The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
61

Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
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The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
7 months ago
61

Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
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The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist... Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
9 months ago
61

Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist Emma Kunz

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
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The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent "A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
a year ago
60

May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
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The Marginalian
How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old "Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a...
a year ago
60

How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being."
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The Marginalian
The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
a year ago
60

The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
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The Marginalian
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial... An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
a year ago
60

God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
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The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
60

How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
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The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred "I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
a year ago
60

Love and the Sacred

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
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The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
a year ago
59

How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
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The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work "Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
59

May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
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The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred "Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
a year ago
59

The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
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The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet "It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
a year ago
58

May Sarton on Grieving a Pet

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
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The Marginalian
A Taste of How It Feels to Be Free: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on Our Inner Conflicts,... "The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be...
a year ago
58

A Taste of How It Feels to Be Free: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on Our Inner Conflicts, the Psychology of Hopelessness, and the Path to Wholeness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs. It can be approximated only to the extent that...
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The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish... On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
a year ago
58

The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish Productivity and Compulsive Distraction

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes true psychic creativity from obsessional productiveness."
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The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote... "War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
a year ago
58

War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote to Media Manipulation

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being."
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The Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself "What is happiness but growth in peace."
a year ago
57

The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"What is happiness but growth in peace."
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The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions "This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
a year ago
57

Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
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The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
6 months ago
56

Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
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The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30... "We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
55

Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30 Years Before ChatGPT

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
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The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
a year ago
55

Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
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The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
4 months ago
54

How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
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The Marginalian
How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into...
4 months ago
54

How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into motion the Rube Goldberg machine of events that turned atoms born in the first stars into you — into this temporary clump of borrowed stardust that, for the brief interlude between...
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The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
5 months ago
54

How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person one needs."
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The Marginalian
You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective "The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
6 months ago
54

You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
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The Marginalian
The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living "The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and...
a year ago
53

The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing."
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The Marginalian
An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that...
7 months ago
53

An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that animated the first breath of life, coursing with electric charges that will power the last thought. To me, a cloud will always be a spell against indifference — a little bloom of...
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The Marginalian
The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne "Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
5 months ago
53

The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
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The Marginalian
The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful... On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom...
a year ago
53

The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful Flower Pigment Prints via a Victorian Imaging Process

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom the word scientist was coined — sent a letter to the polymathic English astronomer John Herschel, who six years earlier had coined the word photography for the radical invention of...
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The Marginalian
200 Years of Solitude: Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists in Praise of the Creative and... There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows...
7 months ago
52

200 Years of Solitude: Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists in Praise of the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Fertile Aloneness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything — a poem, a painting, a theorem — is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In...
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The Marginalian
The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the... Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote...
8 months ago
52

The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the Moon to Unify the World’s First Empire

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote Frankenstein, not yet knowing I too was to become a writer, I found myself wandering the vast cool halls of the Penn Museum. There among the thousands of ancient artifacts was one to...
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The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship "A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet...
6 months ago
52

Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us."
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The Marginalian
Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and... In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a...
a year ago
52

Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and Flowers

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a memorial profile of “California’s Mother of Gardens” — a hopeful antidote to the undoing of the human world, celebrating the woman who covered Southern California with the loveliest...
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The Marginalian
Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal "Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
6 months ago
52

Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
"Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
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The Marginalian
From the Labor Camp to the Pantheon of Literature: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer "I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
5 months ago
52

From the Labor Camp to the Pantheon of Literature: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
"I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
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The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest... "We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
5 months ago
51

The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest Form of Faith

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
"We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or Jupiter."
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The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries... "At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
6 months ago
51

Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries and Limits as Frontiers of Transformation and Growth

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
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The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom "Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
7 months ago
51

Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
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The Marginalian
Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died...
8 months ago
51

Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded...
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The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
6 months ago
50

Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
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The Marginalian
What Makes Life Alive: Vassily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness “Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science...
6 months ago
50

What Makes Life Alive: Vassily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science first began raising questions with spiritual undertones: What is life? Where does it begin and end? What makes it alive? But in the epochs since, having discovered muons and...
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The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace "Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
a year ago
49

Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair."
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The Marginalian
An Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise...
5 months ago
49

An Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of the universe, the knowledge by which everything coheres. All love is an outstretched hand of curiosity reaching for knowledge — a tender...
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The Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
5 months ago
49

The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
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The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of... “I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
5 months ago
49

The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of Time and How to Be More Fully Alive

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
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The Marginalian
Don’t Waste Your Wildness "What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable,...
4 months ago
49

Don’t Waste Your Wildness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary. In...
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The Marginalian
The New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind "Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
9 months ago
48

The New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
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The Marginalian
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels...
a year ago
48

17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals,...
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The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
4 months ago
48

Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
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The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life "We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
48

Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?"
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The Marginalian
Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and... The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
a year ago
48

Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and the Tragic Hero of Science Who Set Out to End Humanity’s Suffering

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
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The Marginalian
Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris...
6 months ago
48

Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
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The Marginalian
Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing "No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you...
a year ago
47

Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do."
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The Marginalian
Turning from Peril to Possibility: Ecological Superhero Christiana Figueres on the Spirituality of... Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from...
a year ago
47

Turning from Peril to Possibility: Ecological Superhero Christiana Figueres on the Spirituality of Regeneration

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from the Garden of Eden — a deeply damaging story about human nature, damning us and our relationship to nature. Unthinkingly, we have perpetuated this story in our present narrative...
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The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
2 months ago
47

Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
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The Marginalian
An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously...
7 months ago
47

An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of...
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The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
3 months ago
47

Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
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The Marginalian
There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the... “Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese...
7 months ago
47

There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the Inner World

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows. As a physical phenomenon, shadows are one of the most beguiling phenomena of nature, emissaries of the entwined history of light and consciousness; as...
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The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds... "But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
5 months ago
47

Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds with Grace

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
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The Marginalian
Audubon on Other Minds and the Secret Knowledge of Animals “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with...
5 months ago
47

Audubon on Other Minds and the Secret Knowledge of Animals

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,” Henry Beston observed of other animals two generations before naturalist Sy Montgomery...
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The Marginalian
How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love “Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
2 months ago
46

How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson sighed in one of her love letters to Susan an epoch before Kurt Vonnegut, in a short and lovely poem, distilled happiness to the knowledge that you have enough. It is not an...
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The Marginalian
The Wild Iris: Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering "Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
9 months ago
46

The Wild Iris: Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
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The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
2 months ago
46

Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
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The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative... The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
46

Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative Work

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
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The Marginalian
Wherever You Are, Stop What You’re Doing Nothing magnifies life — in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Latin for “to make greater,...
a month ago
46

Wherever You Are, Stop What You’re Doing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
Nothing magnifies life — in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Latin for “to make greater, to glorify” — more than the act of noticing its details, and nothing sanctifies it more: Kneeling to look at a lichen is a devotional act. We bless our own lives by recognizing and...
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The Marginalian
The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love “Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of...
a year ago
46

The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of two intertwined freedoms.” We love to forget ourselves, but also to remember what we are: mortal creatures lustful of meaning, radiant with life, eternally alone and eternally...
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The Marginalian
D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo "We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that...
a year ago
46

D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that we are almost crushed to death. Now let us move it."
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The Marginalian
An Antidote to the Anxiety About Imperfection: Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers "It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and...
a year ago
46

An Antidote to the Anxiety About Imperfection: Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and often far short."
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The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and... A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
45

How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and Burnout

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
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The Marginalian
Henry James on Losing a Mother "These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
a year ago
45

Henry James on Losing a Mother

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
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The Marginalian
The Wound Is the Gift: David Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy "Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear...
2 months ago
44

The Wound Is the Gift: David Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
"Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear that underlies that vulnerability."
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The Marginalian
Between Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea... Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or...
5 months ago
44

Between Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea Graff

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or sanitation. Imagine being a gifted child in that world, knowing you are born into a body that will never be granted the basic rights of citizenship in any country, into a mind that will...
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The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are "We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
44

Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
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The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious... In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in...
5 months ago
44

Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious Root of Resisting Women Leaders

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in Philadelphia as a lone teenager from a country thirteen centuries America’s senior, I experienced that wonderful capacity for self-surprise as tears came streaming down my face in a...
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The Marginalian
Kinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love,... “Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental...
5 months ago
44

Kinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love, Sympathy, and Solidarity

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity — this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love. Half a century after Whitman’s atomic...
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The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
5 months ago
44

Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
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The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl "If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
5 months ago
43

Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
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The Marginalian
How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably...
2 months ago
43

How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of...
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The Marginalian
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light “One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives...
a year ago
43

I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero...
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The Marginalian
A Stone Is a Story: An Illustrated Love Letter to Deep Time and Earth’s Memory We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet...
a year ago
43

A Stone Is a Story: An Illustrated Love Letter to Deep Time and Earth’s Memory

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet made a world largely by its rockiness. Rock gave us mountains and beaches, bridges and kitchen countertops, gave us the first Promethean fire that sparked civilization. A rock is...
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The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected... I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
43

The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected Ongoingness of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
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The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death "To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
a year ago
43

The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady through the mists before her."
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The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
4 months ago
42

18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
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The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas... Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
2 months ago
42

How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas Tree

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
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The Marginalian
But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our... How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through...
10 months ago
42

But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our Lives

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a...
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The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting... The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
4 months ago
42

Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting Their Talent

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
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The Marginalian
The Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer for Presence How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
a year ago
42

The Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer for Presence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
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The Marginalian
Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Visualizations of Sound “I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman...
6 months ago
42

Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Visualizations of Sound

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman exulted in his ode to the “puzzle of puzzles” we call Being. How puzzling indeed, and how miraculous, that of the cold silence of spacetime voice emerged, in all its warm loveliness —...
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The Marginalian
Between the Infinite and the Infinitesimal: A Scientist’s Search for the Fulcrum of Faith "The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a...
a year ago
41

Between the Infinite and the Infinitesimal: A Scientist’s Search for the Fulcrum of Faith

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a stage on which drama unfolds, it is the unfolding drama itself."
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The Marginalian
A Lighthouse for Dark Times This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of...
3 months ago
41

A Lighthouse for Dark Times

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that...
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The Marginalian
What Makes a Compassionate World: Sophie de Grouchy’s Visionary 18th-Century Appeal to Parents and... The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I awoke to terrifying flashbacks of my childhood...
a year ago
41

What Makes a Compassionate World: Sophie de Grouchy’s Visionary 18th-Century Appeal to Parents and Teachers

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The morning after the 2016 presidential election, I awoke to terrifying flashbacks of my childhood under a totalitarian dictatorship. Desperate for assurance that the future need not hold the total moral collapse of democracy, I reached out to my eldest friend for perspective....
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The Marginalian
Beyond Either/Or: Kierkegaard on the Passion for Possibility and the Key to Resetting Relationships "Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the...
7 months ago
41

Beyond Either/Or: Kierkegaard on the Passion for Possibility and the Key to Resetting Relationships

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

7 months ago
"Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility."
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The Marginalian
Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go "We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate...
a year ago
41

Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go."
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The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which... “Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
3 months ago
41

The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which Is Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
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The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
3 months ago
40

The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
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The Marginalian
A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly "Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain...
8 months ago
40

A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being."
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The Marginalian
The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith "There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the...
a year ago
40

The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things."
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The Marginalian
Blue Glass Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and...
a year ago
40

Blue Glass

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and gasped at the sight of what looked like two extraordinary jewels sparkling on a bed of yellow leaves, right there on the sidewalk — chunks of cobalt glass, much larger than what a...
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The Marginalian
How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right... "It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
a year ago
39

How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right Thing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
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The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice "The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
3 months ago
39

Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
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The Marginalian
From Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Became The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
a year ago
39

From Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Became

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
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The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
2 months ago
39

Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
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The Marginalian
The Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with... "We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather...
a year ago
39

The Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with Uncertainty

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay."
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The Marginalian
How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön "We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."
a year ago
39

How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."
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The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest... “All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
3 months ago
39

The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest Humanity

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
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The Marginalian
Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired... Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
a year ago
39

Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired Hilma af Klint

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
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The Marginalian
Archives of Joy: Reflections on Animals and the Nature of Being An invitation to "a certain, forgotten way of seeing the world" and an exultation at "earthly life,...
a year ago
38

Archives of Joy: Reflections on Animals and the Nature of Being

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
An invitation to "a certain, forgotten way of seeing the world" and an exultation at "earthly life, with its duration so short it obliges us to surpass ourselves."
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The Marginalian
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes... “The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be...
9 months ago
38

The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes of Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be an artist, “is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.” The choreographer Martha Graham called this particular shade of...
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The Marginalian
Look Up: The Illustrated Story of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Who Laid the Groundwork for... How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
a year ago
38

Look Up: The Illustrated Story of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Who Laid the Groundwork for Measuring the Universe

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
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The Marginalian
The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without...
a year ago
37

The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without fear, without anxiety, but instead with awe and wonder at this strange and beautiful cosmos we find ourselves in."
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The Marginalian
Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments... "The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often...
a year ago
37

Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments of a Fulfilling Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it."
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The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name "Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
10 months ago
36

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
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The Marginalian
How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing "Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward...
10 months ago
36

How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward the object and envelops it in warm corroboration, uniting us with it and positively affirming its being."
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The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the... "I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
3 months ago
36

A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the Relationship Between Creativity and Democracy

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
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The Marginalian
The Cosmogony of You We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive....
2 months ago
35

The Cosmogony of You

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive. Wonder is always an edge state, its edge so sharp it threatens to rupture the mundane and sever us from what we mistake for reality — the TV, the townhouse, the trauma narrative. If we...
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The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
2 months ago
35

Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
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The Marginalian
William James on Love "If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms...
10 months ago
35

William James on Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved."
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The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life "The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
3 months ago
35

Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
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The Marginalian
Marie Howe’s Stunning Hymn of Humanity, Animated "It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
10 months ago
35

Marie Howe’s Stunning Hymn of Humanity, Animated

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
"It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
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The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith “Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
6 months ago
35

The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

6 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
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The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism "Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
34

A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their relations."
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The Marginalian
The Promethean Power of Burnout "Burnout fully realised is also the decisive, exhausted moment in which we realise we cannot go on...
a month ago
34

The Promethean Power of Burnout

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
"Burnout fully realised is also the decisive, exhausted moment in which we realise we cannot go on in the same way. Not being able to go on, is always in the end, a creative act, the threshold moment of our transformation."
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The Marginalian
Fox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard... An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
a year ago
34

Fox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard Dioramas

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
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The Marginalian
Kafka on Friendship and the Art of Reconnection Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a...
3 months ago
34

Kafka on Friendship and the Art of Reconnection

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a profound knowledge of each other, of the soul beneath the costume of personality — that lovely Celtic notion of anam cara. We bring this knowledge, this mutual understanding, to...
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The Marginalian
A Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality "Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
2 months ago
33

A Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
"Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
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The Marginalian
The Power of Being a Heretic: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Critical Thinking,... "If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of...
a year ago
33

The Power of Being a Heretic: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Critical Thinking, Emotional Imagination, and How to Rehumanize the World

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of all, that new emotional imagination... begotten of enlarged sympathies and a more sensitive habit of feeling."
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The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music "Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
a year ago
33

A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything came."
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The Marginalian
The Experience Machine: Cognitive Philosopher Andy Clark on the Power of Expectation and How the... "We are never simply seeing what’s 'really there,' stripped bare of our own anticipations or...
a year ago
33

The Experience Machine: Cognitive Philosopher Andy Clark on the Power of Expectation and How the Mind Renders Reality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We are never simply seeing what’s 'really there,' stripped bare of our own anticipations or insulated from our own past experiences. Instead, all human experience is part phantom — the product of deep-set predictions."
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The Marginalian
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife "Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and...
11 months ago
33

The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and open ourselves to a greater wonder."
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The Marginalian
An Ecology of Intimacies At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of...
11 months ago
32

An Ecology of Intimacies

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, undergirded by a mycelial web of trust and tenderness. One is profoundly changed by it and yet becomes more purely oneself as projections give way to...
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The Marginalian
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult... “Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a...
3 months ago
32

The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult Question of How to Be Yourself

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a love letter to language as an instrument of thought and a medium of being. “Words are events, they do things, change things,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a generation after her. To...
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The Marginalian
How to Make a World: A Poem Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel...
a year ago
32

How to Make a World: A Poem

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel like metaphors — they feel like equations equating something previously unseen with something familiar in order to see more deeply into the nature of reality. One morning out on a...
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The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
32

The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
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The Marginalian
Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V... “What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first...
3 months ago
32

Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V Formation

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an...
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The Marginalian
The Rigor of Angels: Human Nature and the Nature of Reality "What we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in...
a year ago
32

The Rigor of Angels: Human Nature and the Nature of Reality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"What we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves."
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The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education "While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the...
a year ago
32

How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity."
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The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of... "We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
a year ago
31

How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of Self-Transcendence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
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The Marginalian
Cordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi "It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have...
11 months ago
31

Cordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have been minds to manipulate."
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The Marginalian
Some Blessings to Begin with It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are...
a month ago
31

Some Blessings to Begin with

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are some gladnesses I have gathered, and two new bird divinations I have made, as a conscious way of consecrating our days with the blessed fact that we weren’t promised any of this —...
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The Marginalian
Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Make of It a Portal of Creative Vitality Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession...
a year ago
30

Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Make of It a Portal of Creative Vitality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession of some faculty, we have been humbled otherwise: Language, it turns out, is not ours alone, nor is the use of tools, nor is music. Elephants grieve, octopuses remember and...
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The Marginalian
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on the Antidote to Self-Righteousness and Our Best... This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand...
3 months ago
30

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside: Doris Lessing on the Antidote to Self-Righteousness and Our Best Hope for Humanity

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
This is the history of the world: revolutionaries turning into tyrants, leaders who claim to stand with the masses turning the individuals within them on each other, stirring certainties and self-righteousness to distract from the uncomfortable unknowns, from the great open...
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The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life... Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
a year ago
30

Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life Livable

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
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The Marginalian
Endling: A Poem I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
a year ago
30

Endling: A Poem

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
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The Marginalian
The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea "The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience,...
8 months ago
30

The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach."
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The Marginalian
Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings “There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a...
10 months ago
30

Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

10 months ago
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness. “Welcome home!” a cheaply suited broker once exclaimed at me, swinging open the door to a tiny studio as my foot...
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The Marginalian
A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the...
2 months ago
30

A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the laboratory in which evolution invented dreams and the cathedral in which it invented faith. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin consoled himself as his beloved...
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The Marginalian
The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded... Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
a year ago
30

The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded the Western Imagination

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
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The Marginalian
How to Make America Great: A Visionary Manifesto from the Woman Who Ran for President in 1872 In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June...
a month ago
30

How to Make America Great: A Visionary Manifesto from the Woman Who Ran for President in 1872

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June 9, 1927) ran for President, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate. Papers declared her candidacy “a brazen imposture, to be extinguished by laughter rather than by law.”...
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The Marginalian
Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective "No guarantees in this life."
a year ago
29

Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"No guarantees in this life."
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The Marginalian
Emerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for This Liminal Season... "There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and...
3 months ago
29

Emerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for This Liminal Season Today)

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
"There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony."
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The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about... The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
2 months ago
29

How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about Cherishing the Particular

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
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The Marginalian
Forgiveness Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare,...
a month ago
29

Forgiveness

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare, splendid poem “blessing the boats.” We had met at a poetry workshop and shared a resolution to write more poetry in the coming year, so we began taking turns each week choosing a line...
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The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
11 months ago
29

The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
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The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made "Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
12 months ago
28

How Emotions Are Made

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

12 months ago
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
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The Marginalian
The Universe in Verse Book "We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and...
9 months ago
28

The Universe in Verse Book

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and deepen the terms on which we meet ourselves and each other. At the crossing point of the two we may find a way of clarifying our experience and of sanctifying it."
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The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance "Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
3 months ago
28

Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle."
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The Marginalian
George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life "At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often...
11 months ago
28

George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me."
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The Marginalian
Doris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection “There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance...
a year ago
28

Doris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the...
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The Marginalian
The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks... There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between...
a year ago
27

The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks about the Blessed Overwhelm of Transformation

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between felt experience and our mental models of it, about the nature of knowledge, the mystery of consciousness, and the irreducibility of aliveness: Living in a black-and-white chamber,...
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The Marginalian
Don’t Waste Your Greening Life-Force: Hildegard’s Prophetic Enchanted Ecology The year is 1174. Gravity, oxygen, and electricity have not been discovered. Clocks, calculus, and...
a month ago
26

Don’t Waste Your Greening Life-Force: Hildegard’s Prophetic Enchanted Ecology

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
The year is 1174. Gravity, oxygen, and electricity have not been discovered. Clocks, calculus, and the printing press have not been invented. Earth is the center of the universe, encircled by heavenly bodies whose motions are ministered by angels. Most people never live past...
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The Marginalian
The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom “We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting...
4 months ago
26

The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting our wildness, insisting on the “primal allegiance” the human spirit has to the wild. A decade after artist Rockwell Kent headed to a remote Alaskan island “to stand face to face...
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The Marginalian
There’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with...
3 months ago
26

There’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with ghosts — all of our disappointed hopes and our outgrown dreams, all the abandoned novels and unproven theorems, all the people we used to love, all the people we used to be. A ghost is...
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The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
5 months ago
26

Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
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The Marginalian
The Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily...
a year ago
26

The Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily envisioned, for he was a toddler in Germany when a British chocolatier created the first modern version of what we now think of as chocolate: a paste of sugar, chocolate liquor, and...
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The Marginalian
The Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of...
4 months ago
25

The Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of summer and the season for tending to the inner garden, as Rilke wrote of winter. Autumn is a living metaphor for the necessary losses that shape our human lives: What falls away...
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The Marginalian
The Countercultural Sanity of the Irrational: Pioneering Psychiatrist Otto Rank on the Blind Spots... In one crucial respect at least, the human animal does not pass the mirror test of self-knowledge:...
a month ago
25

The Countercultural Sanity of the Irrational: Pioneering Psychiatrist Otto Rank on the Blind Spots of Reason

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
In one crucial respect at least, the human animal does not pass the mirror test of self-knowledge: We move through the world by impulse and emotion, then look back and rationalize our choices, declaring ourselves creatures of reason. Western civilization, with its structural bias...
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The Marginalian
Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024 Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to...
a month ago
24

Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to see clearly the contour of who we are in its points of attention and priority. “How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard wrote, “is how we spend our lives.” How we spend our minds is...
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The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
24

A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human communication is not the exchange of information but the exchange of understanding. If we...
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The Marginalian
The Art of the Sacred Pause and Despair as a Catalyst of Regeneration Just as there are transitional times in the life of the world — dark periods of disorientation...
a month ago
24

The Art of the Sacred Pause and Despair as a Catalyst of Regeneration

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
Just as there are transitional times in the life of the world — dark periods of disorientation between two world systems, periods in which humanity loses the ability to comprehend itself and collapses into chaos in order to rebuild itself around a new organizing principle — there...
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The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
a year ago
24

The Fairy Tale Tree

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
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The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest... “All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
3 months ago
24

The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest Humanity

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

3 months ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
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The Marginalian
The Hot Shower as Uncommon Prayer One of the paradoxes of being alive is that it is often through the extremes of sensation, through...
a month ago
24

The Hot Shower as Uncommon Prayer

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
One of the paradoxes of being alive is that it is often through the extremes of sensation, through the shock of having a body, that we come most proximate to the subtleties of the soul. Walt Whitman knew this: “If the body is not the soul,” he sang electric, “what is the soul?”...
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The Marginalian
Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning "The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern...
a year ago
24

Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself."
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The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous "The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
a year ago
23

The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
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The Marginalian
The Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds...
a year ago
23

The Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds — enchanting emblems of the water cycle that makes this rocky planet a living world, drifting across our shared dome as if exhaled by some lovesick god. That we should have such a...
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The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work "There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
23

Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of inspiration but in a daily fidelity."
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The Marginalian
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
23

The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
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The Marginalian
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of... "It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most...
11 months ago
23

We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of Beginning Afresh

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

11 months ago
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and complicatedly, matters the most."
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The Marginalian
The Light in the Abyss Between Us Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a...
a month ago
23

The Light in the Abyss Between Us

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a friend’s son came home from school to recount with something between shock and exhilaration how he realized while talking to a classmate that the notion of a mental image is not merely...
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The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
23

The Half-Life of Hope

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
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The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
22

Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
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The Marginalian
The Poetic Science of the Ghost Pipe: Emily Dickinson and the Secret of Earth’s Most Supernatural... "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
a year ago
22

The Poetic Science of the Ghost Pipe: Emily Dickinson and the Secret of Earth’s Most Supernatural Flower

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
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The Marginalian
Favorite Books of 2023 To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of...
a year ago
22

Favorite Books of 2023

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night. While the literature of the present comprises only a tiny fraction of my own reading, here are a...
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The Marginalian
Sentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that...
a year ago
22

Sentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that this particular chance-constellation of atoms has never before existed and will never again recur in the history of the universe. The fact of each such singularity is a wonder...
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The Marginalian
Center of the Universe: Non-Speaking Autistic Poet Hannah Emerson’s Extraordinary Poem About How to... "Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there."
a year ago
22

Center of the Universe: Non-Speaking Autistic Poet Hannah Emerson’s Extraordinary Poem About How to Be Reborn Each Day

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there."
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The Marginalian
Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being "You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum...
a year ago
22

Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge."
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The Marginalian
On Love: Saint Paul and the Egret Among the myriad things that didn’t have to exist — music, minds, the meadow lark — none is more...
a month ago
22

On Love: Saint Paul and the Egret

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
Among the myriad things that didn’t have to exist — music, minds, the meadow lark — none is more symphonic, more defiant of logic, more capable of winging existence with life than love. Biologically, we could have done without it, could have spent the eons fertilizing cells...
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The Marginalian
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living... Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld...
a year ago
22

Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living Wonders

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped me up short on the shore of Lake Geneva: In the orange sky over the orange water, a...
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The Marginalian
Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the... “To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of...
4 months ago
22

Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the Life-Force

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of life. “What happens when you get to the end of things?” four-year-old Johnny in Ohio asks his mother from the bathtub while Whitman’s borrowed atoms are becoming young grass in a...
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The Marginalian
Change, Presence, and the Imperative of Self-Renewal: Existential Lessons from Islands “No man is an island,” John Donne wrote in his timeless ode to our shared human experience. And yet...
a month ago
21

Change, Presence, and the Imperative of Self-Renewal: Existential Lessons from Islands

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
“No man is an island,” John Donne wrote in his timeless ode to our shared human experience. And yet each of us is a chance event islanded in time; in each of us there is an island of solitude so private and remote that it renders even love — this best means we have of reaching...
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The Marginalian
Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work...
a year ago
21

Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation,” Rilke wrote to his young correspondent. The great difficulty of loving arises from the great difficulty of bridging the abyss between...
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The Marginalian
The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes “That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt...
a year ago
21

The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
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The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023 Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
21

Favorite Children’s Books of 2023

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
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The Marginalian
Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006)...
4 months ago
21

Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

4 months ago
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) urged in her prophetic Parable of the Talents, written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s. Her words remain a haunting reminder that our rights are founded upon our...
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The Marginalian
Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power "There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the...
a year ago
20

Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love."
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The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us "The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
20

How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God."
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The Marginalian
The Mind in the Machine: John von Neumann, the Inception of AI, and the Limits of Logic "Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can...
a year ago
19

The Mind in the Machine: John von Neumann, the Inception of AI, and the Limits of Logic

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can nonetheless open up a new and radiant perspective, because through it a higher order of being is trying to express itself."
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The Marginalian
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous... Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other...
a year ago
19

A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous Vintage Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that...
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The Marginalian
Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind "A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to...
a year ago
19

Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going."
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The Marginalian
Octavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis "On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what...
a year ago
19

Octavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what we combat."
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The Marginalian
A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings "Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
a year ago
18

A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
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The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life "It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
18

Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
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The Marginalian
The First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham...
a year ago
18

The First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–c. 1040), known in the West as Alhazen, began his life studying religion, but grew quickly disenchanted by its unquestioned dogmas and the way it turned people on each other with...
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The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
18

Spell Against Indifference

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
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The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange Science of Seeing with Sound “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature...
a year ago
18

What It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange Science of Seeing with Sound

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature writer Henry Beston wrote in his lovely century-old meditation on otherness and the web of life. “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted...
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The Marginalian
The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I...
a year ago
18

The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost: “Space may produce new Worlds,” he wrote, and grow rife with them. In the centuries since Milton, who lived through the golden dawn of...
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The Marginalian
On Consolation: Notes on Our Search for Meaning and the Antidote to Resignation The thing about life is that it happens, that we can never unhappen it. Even forgiveness, for all...
a month ago
18

On Consolation: Notes on Our Search for Meaning and the Antidote to Resignation

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a month ago
The thing about life is that it happens, that we can never unhappen it. Even forgiveness, for all its elemental power, can never bend the arrow of time, can only ever salve the hole it makes in the heart. Despair, which visits upon everyone fully alive, is simply the reflexive...
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The Marginalian
The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit "Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a...
a year ago
18

The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a...
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The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition "To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
18

To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
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The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate "It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
18

Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
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The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on What Books Give Us and the Heart of Wisdom Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to...
a year ago
18

Hermann Hesse on What Books Give Us and the Heart of Wisdom

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to learn how to live — how to love and how to suffer, how to grieve and how to be glad. We read to clarify ourselves and to anneal our values. We read for the assurance that others...
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The Marginalian
How the Sea Came to Be: An Illustrated Singsong Celebration of the Evolution of Life “Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in...
a year ago
17

How the Sea Came to Be: An Illustrated Singsong Celebration of the Evolution of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in the pioneering 1937 essay that invited the human imagination into the science and splendor of the marine world for the first time — a world then more mysterious than the Moon, a...
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The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023 Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
a year ago
17

Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
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The Marginalian
The Power of a Thin Skin "To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that...
a year ago
17

The Power of a Thin Skin

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice."
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The Marginalian
Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude “One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting...
a year ago
17

Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience exulted in considering the ideal environment for creative breakthrough. All creative people,...
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The Marginalian
Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our...
a year ago
17

Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever...
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The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise “To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
17

Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
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The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life "If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
17

How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
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The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality "We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
16

The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear."
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The Marginalian
Into the Blue Beyond: William Beebe’s Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the... "It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite...
a year ago
16

Into the Blue Beyond: William Beebe’s Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the Deep Ocean

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite unlike anything I have ever seen in the upper world."
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The Marginalian
Excellent Advice for Living: Kevin Kelly’s Life-Tested Wisdom He Wished He Knew Earlier "The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished."
a year ago
16

Excellent Advice for Living: Kevin Kelly’s Life-Tested Wisdom He Wished He Knew Earlier

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished."
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The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression "This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
16

The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression

from The Marginalian [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
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