Musings Of A Vagrant Mind @musingsofavagrantmind - Tumblr Blog

‘The heavens as they were on April 25, 1384’ by the Persian polymath Mahmud ibn Yahya ibn al-Hasan al-Kashi (completed between 1410 - 11)

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Creating Vertical Gardens and Green Facades with Steel Cables

Vertical vegetation works as more than just an aesthetic adornment. Plants block a part of the solar radiation that hits a building’s surfaces, making indoor spaces cooler and reducing the need for air conditioners. This measure can save electrical energy by 30% due to evaporative cooling and shading.

In front of a blind gable, plants can lower the temperature of the masonry, reducing heat gains, while over an opening, it can filter sunlight that would enter the space. Deciduous vegetation options are an interesting possibility as well, allowing solar radiation to enter in the winter bur stopping it in the summer. In addition to making the air quality better, the leaves also absorb sound (research shows a decrease of up to 5 dB) and reduce discomfort due to unwanted external noise.

Finally, it allows the facade to change its colors periodically, with blossoms attracting bees and other insects that are important for the environment and food production.

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“I don’t know myself, what to do, where to go… I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort… it’s what the world offers… please leave me alone to dream as I fancy.”

— William H. Gass, Omensetter’s Luck

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“All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal… with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.”

— Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

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“That’s all I’ve ever dreamed of… To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn’t matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That’s the best a man can ever do.”

— Paul Auster, Timbuktu

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“We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It was the last time you were going to have Lake Tung Ting shrimp in that kinda shady Chinese restaurant and you had no idea. If you had known, perhaps you would have stepped behind the counter and shaken everyone’s hand, pulled out the disposable camera and issued posing instructions. But you had no idea. There are unheralded tipping points, a certain number of times that we will unlock the front door of an apartment. At some point you were closer to the last time than you were to the first time, and you didn’t even know it. You didn’t know that each time you passed the threshold you were saying goodbye.”

— Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

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“I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

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“She says that is exactly what she’s crying about. That everything is all right. That the world isn’t ending. That we’ll never tell each other how we really feel because everything is okay. Okay enough to just sit around, being okay. Okay enough that we forget we don’t have long, that it’s late, late in this universe, and at some point in the future, it’s not going to be okay.”

— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

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Pomegranates

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“There is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.”

— Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian

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“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”

— Sylvia Plath

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“I was made for another planet altogether. I mistook the way.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Woman Destroyed

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Golestan Palace // Tehran, Iran // August 2018

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“Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night.”

— Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland