Sheweptamongtheoak - Once More Into The Fray

'people have always been people' goes for simple human compassion & humor but only if it also means understanding that historical people have always been as complex and nuanced and innovative as they are now. their food and clothing and language and tools, particularly of ordinary people, however different than you're used to, should not be assumed to represent cultural inferiority or that those people had inferior tastes or intelligence or capacity for feeling than you do

art as a confession James Baldwin (The Precarious Vogue of Ingmar Bergman), Albert Camus (Notebooks, 1935-1942)

Do you ever think about how many of the items now considered priceless artifacts were once commonplace items? The coins we now marvel at from behind the glass at a museum were once tossed around, stepped on, and traded around. The pottery painstakingly pieced back together was somebody’s favorite wine jug. The decorative pin now rusted and bent once held together the shoulder of someone’s chiton. History is simply a trail of ordinary people going about their day, and I think there’s an odd sort of beauty in that.

Lament for the Rohirrim, J.R.R. Tolkien

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, from a letter featured in The Life & Letters of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Lilacs after rain

Photograph from June 2024

late afternoon and the air dissolves to luminous and elongated molecules. A heartfelt mercury as delicate as compelling as the melted movements of your lips

June Jordan, from the Foreword of Haruku/Love Poems

Live slowly enough to think deeply about God.

Don Valley Parkway, Toronto

The End of the Sons of Feanor