(via Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AagfPvWEJc)

Helen Levitt, Children with Soap Bubbles, New York City, c. 1945

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Helen Levitt’s photographs of everyday life in her own New York neighborhood have epitomized domestic urban life for over sixty years. This image of children - one of her most common subjects - demonstrates Levitt’s astute portrayal of gesture, praised as “lyrical” by James Agee in the introduction to her book, A Way of Seeing. As the viewer’s attention echoes the children’s glance toward the left of the scene, the picture poses a riddle as to the bubbles’ source, transforming this gritty city street into a magical metropolitan playground.

Untitled by Ivana Stojakovic

"One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas." ― Victor Hugo, born on this day in 1802

Insanity: inside the Country of the Mind

Insanity: inside the Country of the Mind

Originally posted on Living in the Modem World:

Insanity

In his novel Queen ofAngels, set at the close of 2047, Greg Bear explores the concept of what he calls, “the Country of the Mind”. This, Bear postulates, is the “ground” for all our thoughts. A kind of virtual reality landscape within us where our “big and little selves” – the personality routines which make up the conscious self, and…

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Today marks the 28th Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It also marks 28 years of reducing the legacy of radical social justice and antiwar activist into that of loving quotes on racial reconciliation. Ultimately, think back to what you were taught about Dr. King and you’ll most likely remember…

Best GIFs of 2012:

patakk

We Are Ruled By Wizards

Bending reality is as simple as bending people’s perception of reality. Throughout history, the mythology of civilizations around the world has been full of tales of men and women who mastere…

Bending reality is as simple as bending people’s perception of reality. Throughout history, the mythology of civilizations around the world has been full of tales of men and women who mastered a mysterious, esoteric art which enabled them to use language in a way that […]

The immense hope, and forbearance Trailing out of night, to sidewalks of the day  Like air breathed into a paper city, exhaled  As night returns bringing doubts  That swarm around the sleeper’s head  But are fended off with clubs and knives, so that morning  Installs again in cold hope  The air that was yesterday, is what you are,  In so many phases the head slips form the hand.  The tears ride freely, laughs or sobs:  What do they matter? There is free giving and taking;  The giant body relaxed as though beside a stream  Wakens to the force of it and has to recognize  The secret sweetness before it turns into life—  Sucked out of many exchanges, torn from the womb,  Disinterred before completely dead—and heaves  Its mountain-broad chest. “They were long in coming,  Those others, and mattered so little that it slowed them  To almost nothing. They were presumed dead,  Their names honorably grafted on the landscape  To be a memory to me. Until today  We have been living in their shell.  Now we break forth like a river breaking through a dam,  Pausing over the puzzled, frightened plain,  And our further progress shall be terrible,  Turning fresh knives in the wounds  In the gulf of recreation, that bare canvas  As matter-of-fact as the traffic and that day’s noise.”  The mountain stopped shaking; its body  Arched into its own contradiction, its enjoyment,  As far from us lights were put out, memories of boys and girls  Who walked here before the great change,  Before the air mirrored us,  Taking the opposite shape of our effort,  Its inseparable comment and corollary  But casting us further and further out.  Wha—what happened? You are with  The orange tree, so that its summer produce  Can go back to where we got it wrong, then drip gently  Into history, if it wants to. A page turned; we were  Just now floundering in the wind of its colossal death.  And whether it is Thursday, or the day is stormy,  With thunder and rain, or the birds attack each other,  We have rolled into another dream.  No use charging the barriers of that other:  It no longer exists. But you,  Gracious and growing thing, with those leaves like stars,  We shall soon give all out attention to you.

—John Ashbery, “Spring Day” Art Credit Lottie Hedley

Firework shows welcome 2014

Reblogged from Flickr Blog:

The night skies around the world hosted an array of firework shows in a magnificent farewell to 2013 and collective greeting for 2014.

See, and share, more celebration photos in the New Year Celebrations gallery and Firework…

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Our quote of the day is from the Irish poet W.B. Yeats