By: Judson Stacy VereenJudson Vereen in Los Angeles. Photo by Sharkey Smalls.Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedCan I put my praise on hold? (For a moment or two or three) and laugh out loud at God or pretend it was me? May I take your hand for a moment, And sha
By: Julia VinogradPoetry is a bridge between wounds. — Julia VinogradText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedGood and evil are only high and low on one string of god’s violin. There are other strings being played stretching from our guts to the end of the world. Tel
“D.H. Lawrence will outlive the British Empire. He will outlive her as Caesar and Cicero have outlived Rome. An empire lives only as long as it has living geniuses to give it their flame…” — Henry MillerAs everyone knows, the body of Lawrence’s work forms a huge self-portrait. He looked into the mir
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” — Ralph Waldo EmersonSubscribe nowTo go into solitude, a man needs to retire as
By: Wisława SzymborskaSubscribe nowText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhy does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; does she hear somet
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.—Joseph CampbellSubscribe nowMyths to Live By is one of my favorite works by the great Joseph Campbell. In this thought-provoking book, one of the themes Campbell examines is the contrasts between Western and Eastern r
By: Gregory CorsoText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThere’s a truth limits man A truth prevents his going any farther The world is changing The world knows it’s changing Heavy is the sorrow of the day The old have the look of doom The young mistake their fate
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. —Henry David ThoreauPoets and mystics through the ages have often grappled with the concept of "eternity," often approaching it not as an abstract or temporal idea but as an experiential reality. Their re
“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”― Pearl S. BuckI was not ambitious to be learned because of the honors it might confer, for I was taught that ambition itself was not the quality of a learned person. One must love learning for its own sake. Read more
By: Albert HuffsticklerPhoto: Thurston HopkinsGive a gift subscriptionText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThey like to write where people are. They like a little noise with their silence. They want to look up and see something. They want to be surprised. They li
By: Charles BukowskiGet 20% off for 1 yearText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedyou have to have it or the walls will close in. you have to give everything up, throw it away, everything away. you have to look at what you look at or think what you think or do what yo
By: May SartonPhoto: Katrien De BlauwerGet 20% off for 1 yearText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedNow I become myself. It’s taken Time, many years and places; I have been dissolved and shaken, Worn other people’s faces, Run madly, as if Time were there, Terribly ol
By: Erik RittenberryAertgen Van Leyden – St. Jerome in his Study by Candlelight (1520)The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. — EmersonGet 20% off for 1 yearTo exude any whif
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAnd then a scholar said, Speak of Talking. And he answered, saying: You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips
By: Vampyre Mike KasselText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI remember when Dylan was a snot nosed young punk full of milk and vitriol, peering belligerently at you from album covers, all tumbleweed hair and baby fat cheeks, sneering down his nose at the old and t
Subscribe nowIn his book The Gay Science, Nietzsche delivers a profound thought experiment that forces us to ponder the possibility that all events in life—every moment, decision, and experience—repeat infinitely, precisely as they have before.This Nietzschian concept poses a profound challenge: if
By: Llewelyn PowysArt: Edward Moran, "Life Saving Patrol." (1925)Our ordinary minds demand an ordinary world and feel at ease only when they have explained and taken for granted the mysteries among which we have been given so short a license to breathe. Imagine the state of wonder that would possess
By: Sri ChinmoyPhoto: Erik RittenberryText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedNo mind, no form, I only exist; Now ceased all will and thought; The final end of Nature’s dance, I am it whom I have sought. A realm of Bliss bare, ultimate; Beyond both knower an
By: Charles BukowskiText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publisheda woman, a tire that’s flat, a disease, a desire: fears in front of you, fears that hold so still you can study them like pieces on a chessboard… it’s not the large things that send a man to the madhouse. de
By: Erich FrommArt: Jean-Pierre WeillThe Way to do is to be. —LAO-TSE People should not consider so much what they are to do, as what they are. —MEISTER ECKHARTThe alternative of having versus being does not appeal to common sense. To have, so it would seem, is a normal function of our life: in orde
