Mental/Aesthetics

Currently reading.

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:19:53 +0200

Currently reading.

László Moholy-Nagy, At Coffee, c. 1920s

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:19:47 +0200

László Moholy-Nagy, At Coffee, c. 1920s

"We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:19:38 +0200

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

- Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

"When one is young and well read and amiable, there is really no better company than one’s self. We..."

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 06:59:27 +0200

““When one is young and well read and amiable, there is really no better company than one’s self. We are in a desperate strait indeed if we chance at any age to tire of this invisible but ever-present comrade.””

- T. B. Aldrich

Students from the Sorbonne sit around a table in the Jardin du...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 06:59:19 +0200

Students from the Sorbonne sit around a table in the Jardin du Luxembourg, c. 1950

The Rebel’s Manifesto, Keri Smith

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 06:59:08 +0200

The Rebel’s Manifesto, Keri Smith

Insomnia, 4am breakfasts alone with internet wanderings....

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 06:59:00 +0200

Insomnia, 4am breakfasts alone with internet wanderings. Normally would be leaving for Paris around 11 (have my train ticket bought and booked), blatantly disregarding requests for day-long delays. Got to get me to the city of artists & poets.

"I recently became aware of a phenomenon called the Tetris Effect. Tetris is a video game. After..."

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 06:58:44 +0200

“I recently became aware of a phenomenon called the Tetris Effect. Tetris is a video game. After playing the game, people frequently see the game-tiles as they fall asleep at night. Apparently, after playing the game for a time, some people even begin to perceive of the visual world as consisting of interlocking shapes. Writing poetry, it seems to me, has aspects of this acquired way of looking at the world. Poets begin to see potential poetic uses for everything they experience: overheard conversation, novels, poems by others, ad copy, traffic reports, dreams, recollections, idle thoughts. All experience, including interiority, becomes fodder for poem-making.”

- Mary Jo Band, Tetris Effects + Genetics: Why We Write

Studying La Réunion in my French Geography class, learning loads...

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:17:28 +0200

Studying La Réunion in my French Geography class, learning loads of useless facts but god damn is it gorgeous.

Untitled from Nude Series chris enos

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 02:00:53 +0200

Untitled from Nude Series

chris enos

Current room, at host family’s house. Sunday afternoons,...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 02:00:31 +0200

Current room, at host family’s house. Sunday afternoons, retacking up magazine clippings and interpreting the cards, writing and not sleeping nearly as much as my body needs.

"For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you..."

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 02:00:12 +0200

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Breakfast and books.

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:59:44 +0200

Breakfast and books.

"I never want to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other peoples minds as something..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 03:08:14 +0200

“I never want to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other peoples minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.”

- Franz Kafka

Staying up until 3am researching Montparnasse and the artists...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 03:08:00 +0200

Staying up until 3am researching Montparnasse and the artists who inhabited it, drinking stolen wine and hot chocolate and taking notes on Beatnik writing techniques and meditation/sun salutations. Going to collapse into my unmade bed and sleep until noon, and then write the entire afternoon through. Nighty night.

These needs to get on mah body, ASAP. Casual Loose Fitting...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 03:07:45 +0200

These needs to get on mah body, ASAP.

Casual Loose Fitting Cotton Long Pants via Etsy

Untitled Photoset, Mike Brodie I am wildly (and perhaps naively)...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:46:59 +0100

Untitled Photoset, Mike Brodie

I am wildly (and perhaps naively) drawn to such a lifestyle, to such a rejection of everything, forsaking comfort and societal standards to traverse land with like-minded individuals, hardship and friendship and hunger and what feels like enlightenment.

Midmorning coffee, postal efforts, mental introspections, good...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:46:46 +0100

Midmorning coffee, postal efforts, mental introspections, good literature. I know I have to stop spending my euros on espresso’s, but I honestly cannot resist the draw of hours spent at rickety cafe tables.

BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE, Kerouac

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:46:34 +0100

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

“The picture was taken roughly a decade ago. I had...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:46:18 +0100

“The picture was taken roughly a decade ago. I had recently graduated from college and was living in New York. I fancied myself an aesthete with a penchant for writing very questionable poetry. I specifically remember having just read and being profoundly moved by George Moore’sConfessions of a Young Man. He would have been my biggest influence at the time, alongside Rimbaud and the various poetic stars of the Romantic movement (Coleridge, Keats, etc.). Needless to say, this staged photograph of me is an homage to my nineteenth-century literary heroes.

—M. Monroe Johnson”

Paris Review’s Portrait-of-the-Artist-as-a-Young-Person Finalists