Like the flame reads the wood

"I read like the flame reads the wood." - Alfred Döblin. Poetry, articles, extracts and quotations.

[tetw]

5 Great Essays about Death

How to Practice by Ann Patchett - I wanted to get rid of my possessions, because possessions stood between me and death

If My Dying Daughter Could Face Her Mortality, Why Couldn’t the Rest of Us? by Sarah Wildman - She turned to me and asked, “What if this is the best I ever feel again?” Three hundred and seventy-six days later, she was dead.

The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff Goodell - The story of a couple who died on a scalding hike with their one-year-old daughter

I Nearly Died Drowning. Here’s What it’s Like to Survive. by Maggie Slepian - On coming to terms with a near-death experience

A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing? by Jia Tolentino - What the death of a health-insurance C.E.O. means to America.

Plus click through for the full list of 30 Great Articles about Death

[huariqueje]

Dune Grass - Helen Gotlib

American , b. 1981 -

Mixed Media, 23.50 x 34.50 in

[tetw]

5 Great Articles about Climate Change

The Science of Climate Change Explained by Julia Rosen - Definitive answers to the big Questions

How Soon Might the Atlantic Ocean Break? by Sandra Upson - A gigantic, weather-defining current system could be headed to collapse

Has the Amazon Reached Its ‘Tipping Point’? by Alex Cuadros - Some Brazilian scientists fear that the Amazon may become a grassy savanna — with profound effects on the climate worldwide

What to Do with Climate Emotions by Jia Tolentino - If the goal is to insure that the planet remains habitable, what is the right degree of panic, and how do you bear it?

After Climate Despair by Matt Frost - The hope for a global conversion to austerity has failed to stop climate change. What comes next?

Plus check out the full list of 50 Great Articles about Climate Change

[acti-veg]

“We normalise the abnormal, and accept the unacceptable. Remember that more than 80 per cent of people live under light polluted skies, and two-thirds of Europeans are immersed in noise equivalent to constant rainfall. Many people have no idea what true darkness or quiet feels like.

Within that inexperience, vicious cycles begin to spin. As we desecrate sensory environments, we become accustomed to the results. As we push the animals away, we get used to their absence. As the problems of sensory pollution grow, our willingness to address it subsides. How do we solve a problem that we don’t realise exists?”

-Ed Yong, An Immense World

[petaltexturedskies]

The secret of being happy consists of knowing how to enjoy yourself—enjoy being at table, in bed, enjoy standing up, sitting down, enjoy the nearest ray of sunshine, the slightest bit of landscape: in other words, love everything. Thus it follows that to be happy you must already be so there's no bread without leavening.

Gustave Flaubert, from a notebook entry written c. September 1839

[liketheflamereadsthewood]

Joy and pain, struggle and achievement – who best tells the story of Black lives?

We asked a group of Black Britons, some famous, some not: who do you most revere as a chronicler of the Black journey, in Britain and abroad

[liketheflamereadsthewood]

‘For too long literature has been defined by one set of people’: writing back to the empire and beyond

Black novelists, poets and playwrights have a long history of reclaiming narratives, the theme of this year’s Black History Month. Novelist

[liketheflamereadsthewood]

On Complicated...

On the one translation choice I have been asked about a gazillion times, as if it were the only translation choice I’ve ever had to make…

[liketheflamereadsthewood]

The cult of storage: is tidying really the fast track to a happier, healthier life?

Clutter and chaos can have all kinds of effects, from decreased productivity to a compulsion to eat unhealthily. So is it time we became hot

Interesting discussions and advice in the comments:

Don't buy stuff

Cupboards, shelves, etc.

Sustainable arrangement of things for use

[liketheflamereadsthewood]

A new study has shown that people of Asian ethnicity experience taste more intensely, and contrary to popular belief it’s men who have the s

[liketheflamereadsthewood]

[huariqueje]

Unknown , Sleeping cat   - Evy Låås

Swedish , 1923-1999

Watercolour , 52 x 72 cm.

[exhaled-spirals]

“Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations and concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature […].”

— Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (via exhaled-spirals)

[seaoflove]

Is art resistance? Can you plant a garden to stop a war? It depends how you think about time. It depends what you think a seed does, if it’s tossed into fertile soil. But it seems to me that whatever else you do, it’s worth tending to paradise, however you define it and wherever it arises.

— Olivia Laing, from Funny Weather

[engulfes]

Literally what did olivia laing say about loneliness leading to more loneliness. Loneliness being so repulsive that people sense it from you and stay away. Crazy crazy

[engulfes]

[engulfes]

Furthermore:

[liketheflamereadsthewood]

Michael Donkor, Hold

[litafficionado]

“The kind of reading and writing that I value is a dying art. While it lasts and while I last, I intend to write sentences that are beautiful in their own right, to write paragraphs that respect those sentences while conveying thought: and to arrange those paragraphs in works that promote love and understanding for people whom others with my background may despise or fail to know. I enjoy reading books that have beautiful sentences, and it makes me feel real good if I can try to create something that’s beautiful, even if it’s sad or on an ugly subject. If the thing is well put together, it makes me feel good."

-William T. Vollmann, quoted in Conversations with William T. Vollmann ed. Daniel Lukes