the art of writing

"There is no mystery in the art of writing, but the miracle by which a living emotion is captured without dying in the process is a mystery unless one accepts that to translate a living emotion into words, the emotion must be strong enough to survive the transplantation, and this means strong roots in the base of our emotional nature. Only then is writing effective and contagious.

- Anaïs Nin

The Novel of the Future

manhattan mardi matin

...and the city

the kids are all fine but mom is still vigilant

eastside the black-crowned night heron
Nycticorax nycticorax
hf country lane
"a wise man never ignores the simplicity of a child"

- fortune cookie

all photos by blackberry

the realm of the marvelous

"He who wishes to attain the profoundly marvelous must free images from their conventional associations, associations always dominated by utilitarian judgment: must learn to see the man behind the social function, break the scale of so-called normal values, replacing it by that of sensitive values, surmount taboos, the weight of ancestral prohibitions, cease to connect the object with the profit one can get out of it, with the price it has in society, with the action it commands. This liberation begins when by some means the voluntary censorship of the bad conscience is lifted, when the mechanism of the dream is no longer impeded. Magic ceremonies, psychic exercises leading to concentration and ecstasy, the liberation of psychic automatism, are so many means capable of refining vision through the tensions they induce. It is a means to enlarge faculties: they are ways of approach to the realm of the marvelous."

- Pierre Mabille
Mirror of the Marvelous

currently residing in central park

the practice of leaving

mammatus over brooklyn

stopped in for a budweiser with the regulars at the Liffy II Bar all photos by blackberry

academia

Nervously, and without any real need whatever, Franny pushed back her hair with one hand. "I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!"

- J.D. Salinger

Franny and Zooey

come on with the rain, i've a smile on my face

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmCpOKtN8ME

getting to work via a fairy tale

fine and mellow, indeed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I2a5AJUk7M

manhattan commutes - par le pied

west side mist

favorite morning walk

north woods waterfall

ramblin' woman

winter sky

home sweet home

-all photos by blackberry

catching wild deer

"Poetry turned out to be an invaluable mistress. Because poetry is form, and the wooing and seduction of form is the whole game. You can have all the apparatus in the world, but what you finally need is something like a - I dont' know what - a lasso...a very delicate thing, for catching wild deer. Oh, no, I'll give you an analogy for it. To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off."

- Lawrence Durrell

from an interview in The Paris Review

Issue 22, Autumn-Winter 1959-1960

if love were only a feeling

"One neglects to see an important factor in erotic love, that of will. To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?"

- Erich Fromm

The Art of Loving

dwindled from disuse

"I saw in every phase and moment of his pitiful weakness the utter wretch I had been, the blackguard, nothing less, who had striven so vainly and ignominiously to protect his miserable little heart. I saw that it never had been broken, as I imagined, but that paralyzed by fear, it had shrunk almost to nothingness. I saw that the grievous wounds which had brought me low had all been received in a senseless effort to prevent this shriveled heart from breaking. The heart itself had never been touched; it had dwindled from disuse."

-Henry Miller

Nexus

our chief fear

"With the desire for creation comes the fear of being born. As life is taken up into art, so art is being converted into life. And the birth through creation is analogous to the birth of the self. To create is to become whole and separate, independent, but this indepence is also our chief fear."

- William A. Gordon
The Mind and Art of Henry Miller

whimsical patience

"We climbed a long series of flights of steps to a vantage point where the view opened out before us. Here and there could be seen terraces enclosed by latticework; tiny, well-tended gardens in some level spots: rooftops and light, airy wooden pavilions painted and carved with whimsical patience."

- Gérard de Nerval

Aurélia

caught inside

"People have plenty of pity in them for the infirm and the blind, they really have love in reserve. I'd often sensed that love they have in reserve. There's an enormous lot of it, and no one can say different. But it's a shame that people should go on being crummy with so much love in reserve. It just doesn't come out, that's all. It's caught inside and there it stays, it doesn't do them a bit of good. They die of love inside."

-Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Journey to the End of the Night