Josh Rachford

poking around

[jameschororos]

[fede-le-grand]

[housefullofashtrays]

[nevver]

Making everything a mystery, Lino Lago

[forehsts]

-breathe-

By mrdanielhan

[josh]

stupid trump

[austinkleon]

The purpose of being a serious writer is not to express oneself, and it is not to make something beautiful, though one might do those things anyway. Those things are beside the point. The purpose of being a serious writer is to keep people from despair. If you keep that in mind always, the wish to make something beautiful or smart looks slight and vain in comparison. If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job.

Sarah Manguso (via austinkleon)

[thebeautyofbecoming]

[diananock]

Aw, yeah, that’s the good shit.

[midnightruin]

I love abandoned ruins so much

[signalrun-deactivated20190312]

the world taken back by nature is my aesthetic

[josh]

Saalbach, Austria. I don’t know how to ski.

[austinkleon]

“Study art” signs by John Waters, 2017 Venice Biennale

The signs are parodies of a real sign Waters saw in Baltimore:

“Many years ago, there was a real sign for a real art school in Baltimore on St. Paul Street below 25th Street. It said, ‘Study Art for profit or hobby,’ which is about the most politically incorrect thing you can say if you’re an artist. I loved the sign and was astounded by it. It was completely unironic, and I decided to parody it.”

Here’s the original: 

Filed under: John Waters, signs

[josh]

A Porta-potty in an Amsterdam canal. Life is beautiful. 

[josh]

Vondelpark.

[nobrashfestivity]

Georgia O’Keeffe in Santa fe, by Tony Voccaro and Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow, 1945

[austinkleon]

I will end… with a little scene that took place in the last months of peace. They were the most terrible months of my life, for, helplessly and hopelessly, one watched the inevitable approach of war. One of the most horrible things at that time was to listen on the wireless to the speeches of Hitler—the savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all-powerful. We were in Rodmell during the late summer of 1939, and I used to listen to those ranting, raving speeches. One afternoon I was planting in the orchard under an apple-tree iris reticulata, those lovely violet flowers… Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window: “Hitler is making a speech.” I shouted back, “I shan’t come. I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.” Last March, twenty-one years after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker, a few of those violet flowers still flowered under the apple-tree in the orchard.

Leonard Woolf, Downhill All The Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939 (via austinkleon)

[luigi-de-spiccins-deactivated20]

https://www.facebook.com/annesposito

[bestiario]

I

[josh]

A “Jan Steen” House

I’ve been living in the Netherlands now for about six months, and one of my favorite things I recently learned is about the Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Steen. Here is an example of one of his works. His works largely portray rowdy-yet-cozy home life scenes and a “Jan Steen household” is a home which exemplifies both vibrance and mess, comfort and energy. I even have the privilege of knowing a Dutch family or two who I’d say have a Jan Steen household: children and pets running around, neighbors popping in to say hi, and hosts who are quick to offer a coffee, beer, wine, or tea.

To me, it’s also a reminder that the most modest, yet warm, loving home is preferable to the finest lifeless house.

[kellybergin]

Unstuck. #ninelivesbitches (at Allenhurst Beach Club)