Jean-Paul Sartre

"Hell is other people.”

“That God does not exist, I cannot deny, that my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.”

“Life has no meaning a priori . Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.”

“We are alone, with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Marcel Nino Pajot

Reading List

I'm not sure when I'm actually going to read but I know that I want to keep a list of things I still need to read.

Tales of Ordinary Madness - Charles Bukowski
The Cat's Craddle - Vonnegut
Sophie's Choice - William Styron
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Thus Spake Zarathustra - Nietzsche
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
On the Road - Jack Kerouac

What else??? I need more.

Good Morning.

Irene Suchocki

Simone D'Alliencourt

Little Rabbit.

:) :) :)

Henry Rollins

“Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.”

“I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.”

"To hate is to show you still care, who needs that, focus on what's really important."

"I see the truth as my shield. As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me. I can't really explain it, but I feel as long as I tell them my dark sides there is nothing they can dig up. If I don't hide anything there is nothing to be scared of."

“I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.”

“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”

“I don't want to know. I don't need it. I don't want the information that millions of people have. I don't want to be fed these boring facts and figures. Then you'll become one of the masses. I'd rather starve my mind a bit and have to search out nutrition in stranger places.”

"Go without a coat when it's cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it's all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you're made of and what you're capable of. If you're never tested, you'll never define your character."

Taesang

And not waving but drowning.

Billy Collins
Days
Each one is a gift, no doubt.
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.

Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and a thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.

Through the calm eyes of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow
on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like an impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.

No wonder you find yourself
perched on top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more, Just another Wednesday,

you whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday's saucer
without the slightest clink.

Nikki Giovanni
Woman
she wanted to be a blade
of grass amid the fields
but he wouldn't agree
to be the dandelion

she wanted to be a robin singing
through the leaves
but he refused to be
her tree

she spun herself into a web
and looking for a place to rest
turned to him
but he stood straight
declining to be her corner

she tried to be a book
but he wouldn't read

she turned herself into a bulb
but he wouldn't let her grow

she decided to become
a woman
and though he still refused
to be a man
she decided it was all
right

John Haines
Little Cosmic Dust Poem
Out of the debris of dying stars,
this rain of particles
that waters the waste with brightness;
the sea-wave of atoms hurrying home,
collapse of the giant,
unstable guest who cannot stay;

the sun's heart reddens and expands,
his mighty aspiration is lasting,
as the shell of his substanace
one day will be white with frost.

In the radiant field of Orion
great hordes of stars are forming,
just as we see every night,
fiery and faithful to the end.

Out of the cold and fleeing dust
that is never and always,
the silence and waste to come -
this arm, this hand,
my voice, your face, this love...

Gjertrud Schnackenberg

The Paperweight
The scene within the paperweight is calm,
A small white house, a laughing man and wife,
Deep snow. I turn it over in my palm
And watch it snowing in another life,

Another world, and from this scene learn what
It is to stand apart: she serves him tea
Once and forever, dressed from head to foot
As she is always dressed. In this toy, history

Sifts down through the glass like snow, and we
Wonder if her single deed tells much
Or little of the way she loves, and whether he
Sees shadows in the sky. Beyond our touch,

Beyond our lives, they laugh, and drink their tea.
We look at them just as the winter night
With its vast empty spaces bends to see
Our isolated little world of light,

Covered with snow, and snow in clouds above it,
And drifts and swirls too deep to understand.
Still, I must try to think a little of it,
With so much winter in my head and hand.

Mix and Match

Levitan


I love this painting because it looks like a place I've been to, I actually have a photo of myself when I was probably 9 years old (maybe I'll find it..) and I was standing on a bridge over a river/lake very similar to the one in this painting.

Polenov
His house was actually not far from my hometown and I remember I visited it with my parents in the winter. It was turned into a museum. Also, I'm not sure of the exact location of the place in this painting but it looks very similar to an old mansion in my hometown (so due to proximity it could very be the place I'm thinking of, I've never been there myself but I'm proud that it's been in paintings and it was even the location of a famous Soviet movie!)

Mikhail Vrubel


Repin
Ivan the Terrible and His Son

Brulov
I used to have a picture of this painting hanging near my bed.


Bakst

Sentimental

1. This is probably the most beautiful Waltz I've ever heard from "My Sweet and Tender Beast" (1978).

2. Every time I watched Walking Through Moscow (1963), I would sing this song for days.

3. This song is from АССА

4. From Irony of Fate, 1968

5. Cruel Romance, 1985

6. Not from a movie but just one of the songs I grew up exposed to. Sergej Nikitin at some point worked and lived in my hometown. I actually saw him perform at a small concert when I already moved to the U.S., so strange.

Kustodiev

I just discovered Kustodiev and his style fascinates me. I am incredibly interested in the time period during which he worked (before the Russian revolution, during and after) so I'm biased. There is something nostalgic about these, they make me want to be there. His colors are so rich and full of energy.



(This one is his most famous panting called the Merchant's Wife)