WHEN THE ROSES SPEAK, I PAY ATTENTION «As long as we are able tobe extravagant we will behugely and damplyextravagant. Then we will dropfoil by foil to the ground. Thisis our unalterable task, and we do itjoyfully.» And they went on. «Listen,the heart-shackles are not, as you think,death, illness, pain,unrequited hope, not loneliness, but lassitude, […]
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born in Lyons in 1900. He joined the French army in 1921, and that’s where he flew his first plane. He left the military five years later and began flying airmail routes into the Sahara Desert, eventually becoming the director of a remote airfield in Rio de Oro. Living conditions were Spartan, […]
The ancient Incan citadel of Machu Picchu was rediscovered by an American archaeologist in 1911. Perched on the eastern slope of the Peruvian Andes, the complex was built about 500 years ago, at the height of the Inca Empire. The city is made up of about 200 buildings, including temples, houses, and baths, and it’s roughly […]
«Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours»
«A word is dead when it is said, someone say. I say, it just begins to live that day.»
Mushrooms Overnight, veryWhitely, discreetly,Very quietly Our toes, our nosesTake hold on the loam,Acquire the air. Nobody sees us,Stops us, betrays us;The small grains make room. Soft fists insist onHeaving the needles,The leafy bedding, Even the paving.Our hammers, our rams,Earless and eyeless, Perfectly voiceless,Widen the crannies,Shoulder through holes. We Diet on water,On crumbs of shadow,Bland-mannered, asking […]
Leo Tolstoy set off on a pilgrimage to the Optina-Pustyn monastery. He was 52 years old, and his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), were behind him. He had found himself in a crisis—he was famous, had a family and land and money, but it all seemed empty. He was unable to write, had trouble […]