From Google Arts & Culture - Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer, sculptor, teacher, and artist who worked in Berlin, Germany. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things, published in 1929 as Urformen der Kunst. He was inspired, as was his father, by nature and the ways in which plants grow. He believed that "the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure."
A few prints from there:
Many more here
"When you write historical fiction, as I do, faith can't be sidestepped, so powerful is the force of belief in lives of former centuries.... I'm drawn to the struggle. The thousands of years of human consciousness in frantic search for meaning. All those ancient people ravenous to know how best to live, how to bear the unbearable fact of death.... the gospel messages - turn the other cheek, renounce wealth, care for the least of them -- the most rigorous ethical guidebook yet created. Winton remains steeped in those ethics...he said - 'For me, if it's not about love, if it's not about mercy, if it's not about kindness, if it's not about liberation then I'm just not that interested.' "
"...what lies beneath the surface of every sleepy step I take before breakfast: the resonance of a trillion lives, finished or only just begun, subjects that ache to be fed, seek the light and tilt toward increase in a creation that has been burning and lapping and gnawing and withering and rotting and flowering since there was nothing in the cosmos but shivering potential. To tread here and never pay tribute, to glance and just see objects, is to be spiritually impoverished... Looking deeply, humbly, reverently will sometimes open the viewer to what lingers beneath the hue and form and texture -- the faint tracks of story that suggest relationships, alliances, consequences, damage ... And ghosting forever begind its mere appearance is its holy purpose, its billion meetings with the life urge in which it has swum or tumbled or blossomed, however long or however briefly."
"He has described himself as working like a tradie, referring to the disciplined way he shows up at his wdesk just like any bloke shows up at his worksite and toils for as long as necessary to put food on the table. But he also works like a tradoe in the sense that he has mastered a craft -- all its details, its skills, all its gear and tackle and trim. And that includes sentences of glorious syntactical perfection.... Tim states his mission (on natural beauty): ' As an artist, as someone who writes stories and tries to make words into beautiful forms, it's vitally important to me, especially in a culture that's forgotten the value of beauty.' "
"We read to find life, in all its possibilities."
"...that Winton asks me to question: is a bit more tenderness, a bit more attention, a bit less aversion what's required of us if the really shattered people have any hope of gathering up their broken bits? It is a question that could not be more relevant as we spin away from each other, accelerating under the force of dark matter that we can barely perceive, but what is dragging us nevertheless into ever deeper and more distant silos. Around those high walls, our own opinions echo with a deafening clang, drowing out not only the voices of others, but any voice that even suggests we need to listen.Winton, steeped in the idea of grace, cries out for our resistance. Chich a hand back, he suggests. Let's try for less aggro, more agape.This is the work great writers to. They reveal us to ourselves. They show us who we are, and who we might become. They stand us up where the light is bright -- harsh, even -- and hold the mirror so close that we can't look away. There's immense consolation in it. When we read, we know that someone else has failed in all the ways we have failed. Someone else has felt exactly as we do. Someone else knows what this is like. We are not alone."
“Play the game. Don’t make it all about you. Look for challenges. But don’t aim for a specific outcome. Eschew ulterior motives. Hold nothing back. Be gentle and strong. Get involved, and the hell with winning. Don’t over-analyze, don’t calculate, but stay alert, alert for signs. Be vulnerable. Show your eyes, invite others to look deep; make sure there’s enough space, and try to recognize everyone’s own image. Make no decisions you don’t feel excited about. Let yourself fail. Above all, give yourself time and take the long way round. Never ignore what a tree or a body of water has to tell you. Turn in where you drawn to do so, and give yourself permission to bask in the sun. Never mind your relatives, offer support to strangers, bend down to look at trifles, duck into deserted places, don’t fall for the high drama of destiny, laugh conflict to bits. Show your true colors till you prove to be right, and the rustling of leaves turns sweet. Walk about the villages.”
“It’s just me, offspring of another village. But this you may all be sure of: through me speaks the spirit of a new age, and that spirit has the following to say. Yes, there is danger, and that alone enables me to speak the way I’m going to speak: in resistance. So listen to my Dramatic Poem. You’re right to stop living in a daze, but don’t go waking each other like a pack of barking dogs. No one among you is to blame, and precisely in your fits of despair you may have realized that you’re not really in despair. If you were in despair, you’d be dead already. So don’t act as if you’re all alone. True, your story offers no comfort you can rely on. But stop brooding over to-be-or-not-to-be: being is, and will continue to be, conceivable, and not-being isn’t conceivable. Recognize how alike you are; recognize that you’re alike. It’s just me saying that. But I’m not merely me. “I” in these two guises can be the most flimsy and ephemeral thing on earth, and at the same time the most all-encompassing—the most disarming. “I!” am the only hero—and you should be the disarming ones. Yes, that “I” is the essence of human nature that keeps us human! War is far from here. Our armies don’t stand gray on gray on gray tarmac but yellow on yellow in flowers’ yellow throats. Bowing to show respect to a flower is possible. A bird on a branch can be spoken to. So in a world wrecked by artificial colors, make room for the colors of nature that can revive it. The blue of mountains is real—the brown of a gun holster isn’t; and the person or thing you think you know from television you don’t really know. Our shoulders exist for the sky, and the path from the earth to the sky has to pass through us. Move slowly, and in that way become the form without which no distance can take shape. Nature’s the only promise you can rely on. Yet nature can be neither refuge nor escape. Nature does provide a gauge, however: it just has to be checked daily. The clouds passing overhead, even when they race by, slow you down. Who says you must crash and burn? Haven’t you put your war behind you? Well, bolster the peaceful present and display the serenity of survivors. What looked from a distance like a menacing death’s head turns out to be child’s play when you come closer. Air out your thousand-year-old bed. Ignore the childhood-distant doubters. Don’t wait for another war: true peace-lovers can be found in the presence of nature. Don’t show your descendants the devil’s profile. The house of strength is in the other’s face. Here and now is the festival of gratitude. So let it not be said of you that you failed to take advantage of peace: let your labor work wonders—pass it on. But only those who love pass it on: love just one—that suffices for all. In loving you, I awake to myself. Even when most can’t be uplifted, be upliftable. Avert your eyes from the bestial two-legged creatures. Be real. Follow the caravan music. Walk until the vanishing lines emerge from the confused tangle, so slowly that the world becomes yours anew, so slowly that it becomes clear how it doesn’t belong to you. Yes, always keep your distance from power that parades itself as power. Don’t complain that you’re alone—be even more alone. Pass along the rustling. Describe the horizon, lest the beautiful dissolve into nothing again. Describe life-images to one another. What was good deserves to exist. Take your time—and be creative: transform your inexplicable sighs into mighty songs. Our art must aim to cry out to the heavens! Let no one talk you out of beauty—the beauty we humans create is what shakes us to the core. Devote yourselves to demystification, which at the same time reveals the One Mystery. Take note: whenever a child coming toward you stares at you aghast, you are the cause. To take on many disguises will be your destiny, and to prefer a jolly swindle to a truth made public. Play the farces of everyday life. Losing oneself is part of the game. (And yet: only the one who wears no mask marches proudly.) Go forth into the unknown regions of the earth and let those without illusions grin maliciously: illusion provides the strength for visions. Yes, let yourselves be pierced by yearning for form and pass along the healed world—the scornful laughter you receive stems from ignorance; it’s the death rattle of soul-cadavers. The dead give you extra light. Don’t worry if you can’t talk to them: one syllable suffices. But keep our unborn in your thoughts. Beget the child of peace! Save your heroes! They should be the ones to proclaim: War, leave us in peace! You people from here: you’re in charge. Don’t let anyone convince you that you’re the sterile ones at the end of days. We’re as close to the original source as ever. Perhaps there are no wildernesses left. But that which is wild, that which is always new continues to be: time. The ticking of clocks means nothing. Time is the vibration that helps us get through this accursed century. Time: I have you! The blessed day is now. Working effectively you can feel it. Perhaps there is no such thing as rational belief, but there’s rational belief in the divine shudder. Behold the miracle and forget it. Take the great leap. Joy is the only right form of power. Not till you feel joy will all be well with the world. – It’s still true that in the story we all share there’s no comfort we can rely on. Who’s measuring? The child-murderers in power vanish, unpunished. Peace and quiet doesn’t last: the trickling fountains collapse into barricades. Hope is the false wingbeat. Killjoys are everywhere. As we walk beneath the sun of joy, we drink deep of bitterness. Dear folks from here: The cries of dread will go on forever. Your pleading for mercy will merely elicit the thumbs-down sign. So pull yourselves together and look at the man in a dark suit and white shirt. Look at the woman across the river who’s standing on the balcony in the sun. Prove, with the means at your disposal, our human defiance! A blessing upon every kiss, however fleeting. And now each of you: back your seat. Fill the space with demonic energy, through repetition. Form is the law, and it lifts you up. Eternal peace is possible. Listen to the caravan music. Calculating and knowing, be heaven-bound. Hold fast to this dramatic poem. Walk ever onward. Walk about the villages.”
"Humankind lingers unregenerately in Plato's cabe, still reveling, its age-old habit, in mere images of the truth. But being educated by photographs is not like being educated by older, more artisanal images. For one thing, there are a great many more images around, claiming our attention. The inventoy started in 1839 and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems. This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandisoe result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we cab hold the whole wold in our heads -- as an anthology of images."
An aspiration list read for a long time. Begun often, but could not be completed. In the book, once again. Saving some notes as I go.
He suggests reading the last letter first. And indeed, the last letter has a sort of index or contents of what he covers:
And then some perspective:
I have a long list of aspirational reads. And a long pile of unread books either bought first hand, second hand, borrowed, downloaded. I try to tell myself, it is not about the unread, it is about what I put on my day's plate. And I would rather have good sense, appreciation, some uplifting thoughts that lend me some clean perspective, orient me back to my reality, and inspire me to do well there. At least some of such readings every day.
Really like the simple clean thinking. Would love to carry it with me through my day too.
Further about past and future, and their claim on present
In fact his last letter from this volume is a good note to read now and then just to regain some perspective and some sort of positive action forward in the age of disillusions. He has somethings beautiful to say about faith of older times, and the questioning age.
Although, and in fact because it is written in 1930s, the slice of history provided by this book, the context, and then the postscript gives a view of the world right before the second world war. There are very few personal writings that cover the world in that scope which I have come across. If one were to read just a little bit, perhaps the last letter and postscript.
**
I have found an interesting blog post that introduces the book to those who may not know more. Here it is.
**
Further from the earlier sections:
"And so I have always thought that the best way to find out what is right and what is not right, what should be done and what should not be done, is not by giving a sermon, but by talking and discussing, and out of discussion sometimes a little bit of truth comes out."
"the joy of discovery and of learning new things—the great adventure that all of us who care to may have."
"Great leaders have something in them which inspires a whole people and makes them do great deeds."
"Often we may be in doubt as to what to do. It is no easy matter to decide what is right and what is not. Be brave, and all the rest follows."
"But history is one connected whole and you cannot understand even the history of any one country if you do not know what has happened in other parts of the world. I hope that you will not learn history in this narrow way, confining it to one or two countries, but will survey the whole world.... Undoubtedly people do differ from one another, but they resemble each other also a great deal, and it is well to keep this in mind and not be misled by the colours on the map or by national boundaries."
"Of all American poets, I will always have the greatest affinity with Walt Whitman. He fulfills the condition of greatness which Oscar Milosz spoke of when he demanded that a work should be like a river, bearing rich silt and broken pieces of trees, not just nuggets of gold. That is why longueurs and repetitions, entire catalog of objects, should not be irritating. Whitman is the opposite of "pure poetry." But at the same time, one's experience of him is like one's experience of large canvases by master paitners, on which one can discern, through attentive observation, many minute and fascinating details."
"Ambition, after all, is Schopenhauer's Will, a force equal to biological terrors and drives. The will, however cannot do everything, even in sports, where tenacious daily training means so much. Laying oneself open, letting oneself go, a certain comfort with passivity, allows the body to work in harmony. This is even more true in powetry; straining comes to nothing, for we receive the gift whether we are deserving of it or not. There is a contradiction between striving for recognition and fame on the one hand, and creating something that may bring one fame on the other."
"Horror is the law of the world of living creatures, and civilization is concerned with masking that truth. Literature and art refine and beautify, and if they were to depict reality naked, just as everyone suspects it is (although we defend ourselves against that knowledge), no one would be able to stand it. Western Europe can be accused of the deceit of civilization. During the industrial revolution it sacrificed human beings to the Baal of progress; then it engaged in trench warfare. A long time ago, I read a manuscript by one Mr. Ulrich, who fought at Verdun as a German infantry soldier. Those people were captured like the prisoners in Auschwitz, but the waters of oblivion have closed over their torment and death. The habits of civilization have a certain enduring quality and the Germans in occupied Western Europe were obviously embarrassed and concealed their aims, while in Poland they acted completely openly.It is entirely human and understandable to be stunned by blatant criminality and to cry out, “That’s impossible!” and yet, it was possible. But those who proclaim that God “abandoned us in 1941” are acting like conservators of an anodyne civilization. And what about the history of humankind, with its millennia of mutual murder? To say nothing of natural catastrophes, or of the plague, which depopulated Europe in the fourteenth century. Nor of those aspects of human life which do not need a grand public arena to display their subservience to the laws of earth.Life does not like death. The body, as long as it is able to, sets in opposition to death the heart’s contractions and the warmth of circulating blood. Gentle verses written in the midst of horror declare themselves for life; they are the body’s rebellion against its destruction. They are carmina, or incantations deployed in order that the horror should disappear for a moment and harmony emerge—the harmony of civilization or, what amounts to the same thing, of childish peace. They comfort us, giving us to understand that what takes place in anus mundi is transitory, and that harmony is enduring—which is not at all a certainty."
"It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurences and imrpbable coincidences. That we wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of incoceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small and how many they are. That in this unfathomable vastness, these infinitesimal elements are still able to hold themselves together. That we manage to stay afloat. That we exist at all. That each of us has come into being as only one of untold possibilities. The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable, we have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences. Anyone would think that this knowledge would equip us in some small way to face the improbable. But the opposite appears to be the case. We have grown accustomed to living with that knoweldge without feeling dizzy every morning, and instead of moving around warily and tentatively, in constant amazement, we behave as if nothing has happened, take the strangeness of it all for granted and get dizzy if life shows itself as it truly is: improbably, unpredictable, remarkable."
"I have had an eventful day and I am tired, but it's a strange energised tiredness. My brain is spinning. I seem to have changed speed and direction, but also and more particularly, size. I have regained my proper proportions. I am not sure if this is because I spend my nights looking at the sky or because I have gone further afield....I do not take much from this world, I think to myself, not when you consider its size, and I feel as though I have become lighter, more nimble. I can change direction....That's how little difference I make to the world. That's how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November."
