Sailing With the Wind

[phiabarstad]

Such a pleasure to have flowers in one's home :)

[theparisreview]

“I thought the author was a guy. I thought it was a guy for three years until someone clued me in very quietly at Arkansas. ‘It’s a woman, Barry.’ Her work is so mean. The women are treated so harshly. The misogyny and religion. It was so foreign and Southern to me. She certainly was amazing.”

Barry Hannah on Flannery O’Connor, who was born on this day in 1925.

[groundorientation]

But land abuse cannot brighten the human prospect. There is in fact no distinction between the fate of the land and the fate of the people. When one is abused, the other suffers. The penalties may come quickly to a farmer who destroys perennial cover on a sloping field. They will come sooner or later to a land-destroying civilization such as ours.

Wendell Berry (via groundorientation)

[soundboard]

Arvo Pärt - Spiegel im Spiegel

Only a composer of music knows the elation of when a note, so perfectly fitting to that precise moment, is moved from their mind to their finger tip. I find it remarkable to think that this divine piece of music came from one man’s mind. How wonderful to have had a melody like this running through your mind before it’s told to a piano.

All the songs and sounds from music come in so many different forms, yet every piece has been emitted from us people alone, I believe it is one of the few things we humans can say we’ve produced, released and given to the world that is perfect. Music isn’t an embellishment to our lifestyles, it’s at our core and in all its complexities and simplicities it escapes from each one of us every now and then.

Dear listener, just press play and see how everything around you seems more beautiful whilst you listen.

- Rosie

[theparisreview]

Maurice Sendak’s sample artwork for the proposed thirtieth anniversary deluxe illustrated edition of The Hobbit.

[phiabarstad]

[timbarstad]

We're Not Selling Anything

I’m loathe to write a blog that attacks the actions of other Christians, so I’ll try for a gentle correction instead: 

Recently my wife and I drove past a church sign (you know, the ugly kind with black plastic letters stuck to a grooved white board) that read: 

"FREE TICKET TO HEAVEN. DETAILS INSIDE." 

We both laughed at first, at the way it sounded simultaneously desperate and trite. Then we were struck with how offensive the sign really was. We saw our own Christian faith, our deepest convictions about Truth and the Meaning of our lives, being represented to the world like a cheap vacation sweepstakes. 

Read More

[arvopartproject]

The one and only Arvo Pärt.

[phiabarstad]

just a thought

There is a profound difference between sentimentalism and romanticism. 

Sentimentalism depends on the banal, the obvious, the most easily recognized and manufactured of human emotions.

Romanticism delves into the nuances of human experience, the mystery of things, the desire to know oneself and the world better. 

One I cannot stand, and the other I cannot live without. 

[phiabarstad]

I think I'm having a hard time finishing my novel because it feels like I have to say goodbye to Vassily, Sasha, Vavilov, and the rest. 

[phiabarstad]

Percy Shelley

I read about Percy Shelley's life and I didn't like him. He was of the second generation of the Romantic poets and lived from 1792 to 1822. His romantic life was a mess, he had debts he evaded, he was radical in his political and religious views and was a fan of the philosopher David Hume (who, personally, I am not a fan of). 

Then I read his poetry. He writes about the chaos of the universe, about the changeful nature of things, and most of all the changeful nature of the human person. He seemed to surrender to the fact that things outside of us (or perhaps beyond our control), move us, affect us, and it seems in his life, he didn't resist that. He didn't try to conquer certain parts of himself. But in his poems he also praises perfection, beauty, and intellect. He wants beauty to be dominant and true, he wants perfection for himself and all things. 

I'm not sure why, but I was so incredibly moved by him, by his tragic life and his honest poetry which is so full of grasping and searching. Lord Byron said of him that he was one of the kindest and best men he had ever known and that people were mistaken in their judgements of him.

Those three things, he story of his life, his poetry, and Byron's comment, have given me such a different impression than I had from just reading about his life. 

And now, I can't get Shelley out of my heart, and it aches for him in a strange way. It must be because I feel I can understand him a little bit, I can understand the man enough to be moved for him in all he was. Perhaps it's because I see myself in him and most of all in his poetry, perhaps it's because I've known others who were like that. Others who were brilliant, searching souls who couldn't function in this world, who just couldn't reconcile everything. 

Sources: 9th edition Norton Anthology, volume D 

[phiabarstad]

mother and child, January 2014

[phiabarstad]

[phiabarstad]

January, 2014 

[phiabarstad]

I found this book in the library yesterday, so excited to read it!

[phiabarstad]

Winter

When it's so cold like this everything looks and smells different. There's something mysterious about how the frigid air transforms the trees, the sky, the snow, the headlights of the cars, the street lamps, everything. When my face is burning from the cold and my lungs hurt from breathing it in, it makes me aware of the warmth radiating from my own body, it makes me aware of the wonderful comforts of warm houses and wool coats. I guess I just truly am a winter child because for me this weather is like a wake up call. "You are alive!"

[theparisreview]

“The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm is one of the most inveterate of human instincts.” —Edith Wharton, The Decoration of Houses, published on this day in 1897.