follow the river to the fountainhead

(Leo, they/them, 20-sth) - mostly poetry reblogs

[existential-celestial]

Louise Gluck, Mary Oliver, Jack Gilbert, Denise Levertov, Ocean Vuong, Ilya Kaminsky, Mahmoud Darwish, Christian Wiman, j.p.berame (@existential-celestial)

—

praise to our endurance 🌱✨

[othellho]

Elizabeth Tallent, Poets.

[pmamtraveller]

Lilith and Eve, 1963, by Yuri Klapouh

[el-im]

Joan Didion, writing about the shock that followed after the death of her husband, John.

[typewriter-worries]

Tony Dunne, Joan's nephew, recounting a conversation he had with Joan after John's passing in Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017).

[pnwander]

[lindamarieansonsnaps]

[gnossiien]

[filmnoirsbian]

Joan Tierney

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

[boobookittenartblog]

Foie Graphics

[lychens]

"i’ll lighten up eventually, but lately i’ve been deep diving into the “gift of tears” an ancient belief that some sorrow is sacred. ⠀ early monks called it penthos: sorrow that cleanses, a second baptism. not weakness, but recognition but of beauty, grief, love and loss. a way the soul speaks when language fails. ⠀ i’ve cried lately over kindness, grief, animals mourning their people. and it doesn’t feel pathetic. sometimes it feels devotional. ⠀ they said if you cried during prayer, it meant divinity was near. ⠀ if you’ve cried this week, maybe it wasn’t just sadness. maybe it was holy."

-Foie Graphics

[jareckiworld]

Łukasz Jacek — "Night, Rain, City" (oil on canvas, 2018)

[themindmovement]

“I’m just, you know, kind of happy in the doing of things. Even just having a great cup of coffee is happiness. Getting an idea, or realizing an idea. Working on a painting…working on a piece of sculpture, working on a film. One thing I noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work for a goal. For a result. And in the doing, it’s not that much happiness. And yet that’s our life going by. If you’re transcending every day, building up that happiness, it eventually comes to: it doesn’t matter what your work is. You just get happy in the work. You get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn’t what you dreamed of, it doesn’t kill you, if you enjoyed the doing of it. It’s important that we enjoy the doing of our life.”

— David Lynch

[maureen2musings]

South Foreland Lighthouse, Saint Margaret's Bay

james_eastwell_photography

[michaelnordeman]

A young Greenfinch/grönfink. Värmland, Sweden (July 15, 2025).

[petaltexturedskies]

One day you’ll have whatever it is you’re now so confusedly seeking. That kind of calm that comes from knowing oneself and others. But you can’t rush the arrival of that state of mind. There are things you only learn when no one teaches them. And that’s how it is with life. There’s even more beauty in discovering it for yourself, in spite of the suffering.

Clarice Lispector, from "Gertrudes Asks for Advice" in The Complete Stories

[amilkyway]

fireflies lighting up a rural Pennsylvania field at dusk

[antigonick]

As I fall asleep I know beyond a doubt what the real center of my own life is, that time that is past and lost and yet permanent, the enduring moment, the heart of warmth.

—Ursula K. Leguin, The Left Hand of Darkness