anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
Thomas Benjamin Kennington — Contemplation. detail. circa 1900
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
Art history meme (x) - 5-6/10 painthings - On the Seashore (1879) by George Elgar Hicks and Distant Thoughts by Wilhelm August Lebrecht Amberg
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
One’s mind seems to extend itself into different directions when one lies awake and everybody else is sleep – not unhappy, exactly, but speculative and enlightened in a calm way.
Vita Sackville-West, in a letter to Virginia Woolf [1929]
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
There is a tremendous difference between ‘thinking’ in verbal terms and ‘contemplating,’ inwardly silent, on nonverbal levels and then searching for the proper structure of language to fit the supposedly discovered structure of the silent processes that modern science tries to find. If we ‘think’ verbally, we act as biased observers and project onto the silent levels the structure of the language we use and so remain in our rut of old orientations, making keen, unbiased observations and creative work well-nigh impossible. In contrast, when we ‘think’ without words, or in pictures (which involve structure and therefore relations), we may discover new aspects and relations on silent levels and so may produce important theoretical results in the general search for a similarity of structure between the two levels, silent and verbal. Practically all important advances are made that way.
Alfred Korzybski, Polish-American philosopher, scientist and engineer. Korzybski is remembered for developing the theoretical and practical model of General Semantics. His work argued that human knowledge of the world is limited both by the human nervous system and by the structure of language (1879-1950)
One’s mind seems to extend itself into different directions when one lies awake and everybody else is sleep – not unhappy, exactly, but speculative and enlightened in a calm way. One thinks about dying.
Vita Sackville-West on one of her first [and only] bouts of sleeplessness during an illness, in a letter to Virginia [1929]
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
apoetreflects
Every object, well contemplated,
opens a new organ in us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (via apoetreflects)
Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.
Virginia Woolf
I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer