Oct 19, 2025
Have you read Figuring by Maria Popova (2019)?
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Voting ended onOct 26, 2025
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Have you read Figuring by Maria Popova (2019)?
yes
no
I didn't finish it
I've never heard of it
HIII CHESPIIINNN (Ignore Pikachu)
When we encounter a person of exceptional intellectual and creative vitality, their magnetism can disorient the compass needle of admiration and attraction — it becomes difficult, sometimes impossible, to tease apart the desire to be with from the desire to be like.
Maria Popova, Figuring
Maya Figurine with Removable Helmet (approx. 1500 years old). El Perú-Waka', Petén, Guatemala. Ceramic
welcome to winter from my coffee and current reads
August 1st Today is the first day of August. Sniff. July is over. I got up this morning at 6:30. I don’t know why. The dew was very thick and beautiful. All white. Now, however, the sun is out. The sky is blue. And it is going to be a beautiful day. [...]
August 1st Yesterday was not the first day of August. Today is. A free day. Bill and I tried to collaborate this morning but it didn’t work out. [...]
Aug. 3rd Actually I am not sure if today is the 3rd or not. It might be the 4th or the 5th. It really doesn’t matter. [...]
1. The poem present only in a letter Dickinson had sent to Higginson in August 1877, that Popova imagines to have been possibly written having witnessed the eclipse on September 29, 1875:
It sounded as if the streets were running— /And then—the streets stood still—/ Eclipse was all we could see at the Window/ And Awe—was all we could feel. / By and by—the boldest stole out of his Covert/ To see if Time was there/ Nature was in her Opal Apron—/ Mixing fresher Air.
2. Asaph Hall was about to give up his frustrating search for a Martian moon one August night in 1877, but his wife Angelina urged him on. He discovered Deimos (pic 1 below) the next night, and Phobos (pic 2 below) six nights after that. (x)
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Joe Brainard, Dairy 1969 | Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, 1925 | Mary Oliver, August, 1993 | Vincent van Gogh, Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate), 1890 | Maria Popova, Figuring, 2019 | Ocean Vuong, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, 2016 | Taylor Swift, August, 2020
Nobody knows what goes on between two hearts including, more often than not, the people in whose chests they beat.
Figuring by Maria Popova