— Stéphane Mallarme, from “Collected Poems and Other Verse.”
Samuel Palmer (British,1805-1881)
The Harvest Moon: Drawing for ‘A Pastoral Scene’, c.1831–2
Ink and gouache on card
7 Ingredients for a Happy Life
1. Decide to let go of worry and “what ifs”
2. Work on developing your self-confidence
3. Forgive yourself, and others, and let go of grievances
4. Be open and warm in your relationships
5. Don’t compare yourself with other people
6. Define your own success
7. Be optimistic, and keep on persevering
Being is having. Having
may be nothing but the grace of the shell
moving down without hesitation, with lively pride,
down the stubborn river of woe.
Galway Kinnell · “The Room.” When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990)
It is always tempting, of course, to impose one's view rather than to undergo the submission required by art-a submission, akin to that of generosity or love, that evokes the private response rather than the authorized one. But art is not technology and cannot be "mastered." It is an endless access to revelatory states of mind, a vast extension of living experience and a way of communing with the dead. An intimacy with truth, through which, however much instruction is provided and absorbed, each of us must pass alone.
“Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.”
— Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
Written on the back 'Navajo mother tying hair of daughter, showing how brush is used', Publisher University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center
