There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself—
Finite infinity.
Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886) was one of the most original American poets. She is considered one of the most important American poets of the 19th century, along with Walt Whitman.
To read more poems, click here.
(…) having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.
Bill Watterson (b. 1959 -) is an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. Watterson talked about the difference between ambition and happiness in his speech ‘Some thoughts on the real world by one who glimpsed it and fled’, Kenyon College – 1990
To read more quotes, click here.
Spring of 2023 has been cold, extremely so. I would like to file a complaint, please! It didn’t prevent the cherry trees from exploding in pink fluffiness. Eventually.
I went to Kungsträdgården to photograph them, as I do every year, and they didn’t disappoint. It was cold and windy, and the sun made only a short appearance. I was in and out in under an hour, which must be a record for me.
A male bumblebee feeding on lesser calamint (Calamintha nepeta) var. ’Blue Cloud.’ This is a photo from last year, obviously. I take a lot of photos during the summer when there’s light, and then I have a stock of images to process during the darker winter months. And I didn’t get to it until now, to tell you the truth. With all my travels, garden work, and the Book, I feel I’m behind with everything nowadays.
Bumblebees are so interesting. Did you know that they’re cosmopolitan? The 260 species in the Bombus genus can be found almost everywhere in the world, except Australia and most parts of Africa, and at higher latitudes and altitudes than other bees.
Some species even manage to live in cold climates, such as the high arctic Ellesmere Island, Canada’s northernmost island. They can do that because they can regulate their body temperature (heterothermy). Isn’t Mother Nature amazing?
An Australian pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus), ready to mate, as denoted by the yellow patches on his chest. Another older photo, this one is “only” from January. I still have so many beautiful photos from my trip to Australia! I’m reliving the whole trip as I keep processing photos, so I’ll probably still work on some images next year ha, ha!
A western willow spreadwing resting on a pine twig. Another older photo I processed only now in April.
These damselflies fly pretty late, from August to October, and can be found in still or slow-flowing water with overhanging trees such as willows, alders, or birches. Unlike other damselflies, they would lay their eggs in the bark of these trees, not in submerged vegetation.
A male emerald damselfly (Lestes sponsa). It’s easy to tell because females lack the bright blue color of males.
Emerald damselfly, don’t you love that name? They’re most common in July and August, so this is another older image that I didn’t get to process until now.
I hope you enjoyed these photos, there are more to come next month. Hopefully, some new ones!
If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Irish poet considered one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
To read more poems, click here.
Writing is, indubitably, hard. No one can teach you, really. There are books and rules and what have you, and they can help to a certain extent. However, you have to do the work, day after day, and figure out what works for you eventually. One of the things that has helped me a lot is a writing journal.
What is a writing journal, you wonder. Nothing fancy, I assure you. Mine is simply an unassuming black notebook that I keep on my desk while writing. Every time I get an idea, get an insight, notice a problem that I need to address, or realize I need a synonym, I write it all down in my journal.
Why bother? After all, if you have an idea or learned something, it’ll be right there, in your head, where it came from. And it may be quicker to look up a synonym online, for instance.
Ha! You wish. After spending half my morning looking up better ways of saying anxious and debating the various merits of distressed, nervous, and afraid, I had a light bulb moment. This was a waste of my time. I could always do that later, while editing. Just let the writing flow, while it lasts.
As for learnings, I found that the process of writing it all down and reviewing it later made for better retention. I would simply remember it better and occasionally apply it, too. I am human, after all, and not very good at taking my own advice.
I usually review the previous day’s notes in the morning, before starting a new writing session, and would occasionally flip through pages every now and then.
These are some of the things I wrote down in my writing journal. Not world-shattering, certainly, but that made so much difference to my process. Maybe my writing has improved, or maybe not, but one thing is certain: it’s much faster.
If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) is often considered the leading poet of the Victorian era in England.
To read more poems, click here.
It’s an earth song,—
And I’ve been waiting long for an earth song.
It’s a spring song,—
And I’ve been waiting long for a spring song.
Strong as the shoots of a new plant
Strong as the bursting of new buds
Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother’s womb.
It’s an earth song,
A body song,
A spring song,
I have been waiting long for this spring song.
– Langston Hughes (1902–67)
Happy Earth Day! There are small things we can do in our everyday life to make life on Earth better. It all starts with the small steps we take at home every day, for example, planting pollinator-friendly flowers and shrubs, planting a tree, using native plants, or stopping using chemicals in the garden. So let’s make Earth Day every day!
If you liked this post, share it on your preferred social network or forward it to a friend.
It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004) was a French photographer considered a master of candid street photography.
To read more quotes, click here. To read more on photography, click here.
Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;
And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt
At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky
Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion’s look
And what we said of it became
A part of what it is … Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,
Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,
A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.
Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955) was an American modernist poet and an extraordinary stylist.
To read more poems, click here.
There is, I hope, a thesis in my work: we may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody-two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it’s just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats—maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats—but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.
Maya Angelou (1928–2014), was an American poet, storyteller, and autobiographer.
To read more quotes, click here.
