By: CHARLES BAUDELAIREText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSoon we shall plunge into the cold darkness; Farewell, vivid brightness of our short-lived summers! Already I hear the dismal sound of firewood Falling with a clatter on the courtyard pavements. All winter
To me it is still one man alone in a room creating Art or failing to create Art. All else is bullshit. — Charles BukowskiCharles Bukowski is the kind of artist you either despise with every fiber of your being or crown as the underground’s grizzled monarch. His poetry is a cocktail of vulgarity, gri
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”― Eric HofferEric Hoffer was often referred to as "The Longshoreman Philosopher." Born in New York City, he became a self-educated thinker who wrote ext
If you are an artist, that means that you are denuding yourself more and more, that by the time you die you are stark naked and your bowels turned inside out.— Henry MillerI think I should also confess that I was driven to write because it proved to be the only outlet open to me, the only task worth
By: D.H. Lawrence“One great mystery of time is terra incognita to us: the instant…The quick of all time is the instant. The quick of all the universe, of all creation, is the incarnate, carnal self. Poetry gave us the clue: free verse: Whitman. Now we know.” — D.H. LawrenceLife, the ever present, kn
By: Joseph CampbellThe way to find your own myth is to determine those traditional symbols that speak to you and use them, you might say, as bases for meditation. Let then work on you.—Joseph CampbellMythological images are the images by which the consciousness is put in touch with the unconscious.
By: Chief TecumsehArt: Sally MannText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSo live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, p
By: Jim HarrisonPhotograph by Philip NewtonText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedNight and day seize the day, also the night — a handful of water to grasp. The moon shines off the mountain snow where grizzlies look for a place for the winter’s sleep and birth. I jus
By: Charles BukowskiPhoto: Marvin KonerText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedNot much chance, completely cut loose from purpose, he was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere. And it began to snow. And the bus stopped at a little ca
By: Wisława SzymborskaText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedLife While-You-Wait. Performance without rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation. I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it. I have to guess on
Art: Andrew BainesSymbolism in Religion and LiteratureBy Rollo MayAll the great charismatic seers of modern literature from Baudelaire to Kafka and from Pirandello to Faulkner have, in one way or another, wanted us to understand that we are lost in a dark wood and that, in this maze, what is least t
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Erik Rittenberry“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”― Albert CamusIn recent years, each autumn, I have fled the static, sun-scorched flatlands of Florida for the mountains—from the hazy Smokies to the towering Rockies to the golden hues and quaint towns
By: Robert FrostPhoto: Kyle DempseyText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedO hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hush
By: Erik RittenberryCarson McCullers died on this day in 1967.She was one of the great American writers of the 20th century. At the young age of 23 and the release of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, the critics hailed her as the new Steinbeck. Her friend, Tennessee Williams, proclaime
The poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.—James BaldwinMost people live in almost total darkness… people, millions of people whom you will never see, who don’t know
By: Matthew SharpeThe original article was published in “The Conversation” by Associate Professor in Philosophy at Deakin University, Matthew Sharpe.The most life-changing books can seem like they have always been there. What they say may seem obvious, once we’ve read them. But that’s only because t
By: Robert Anton WilsonEvery discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and ‘progress,’ everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of [someone’s] refusal
By: Matthew ArnoldPhoto: Joan VilatobàText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhat is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forego her wreath? Yes, but not for this alone. Is it to feel our strength – Not our
By: Jed MckennaArt: Caitlyn GrabensteinAllegiance to any spiritual teaching or teacher—any outside authority—is the most treacherous beast in the jungle.The power of our devotion to teachers and teachings is not a reflection of their value, but of ego’s will to survive. It’s ego—the false self—that
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Brian DayText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedMy Red Wings are still dusty from a six day saunter in the Rocky Mountains as I walk into a Larimer Street bar in Denver where hipsters drink craft beer on weekday afternoons. I sit amid blur
