Victor E. Frankl: “Man’s Search for Meaning”

Photographers Unknown, Reflections on Life

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?

No, thank you,’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”

—-Victor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Thanks to https://isthistoomuchblack.tumblr.com for the selfie image with sombrero.

Zane Grey: “Every Second the Scene Changed”

Photographers Unknown, Parva Scaena (Brief Scenes): Set Twenty

“I sat there for a long time and knew that every second the scene changed, yet I could not tell how. I knew I sat high over a hole of broken, splintered, barren mountains; I knew I could see a hundred miles of the length of it, and eighteen miles of the width of it, and a mile of the depth of it, and the shafts and rays of rose light on a million glancing, many-hued surfaces at once; but that knowledge was no help to me. I repeated a lot of meaningless superlatives to myself, and I found words inadequate and superfluous. The spectacle was too elusive and too great. It was life and death, heaven and hell.”

—-Zane Grey, The Last of the Plainsmen

E. E. Cummings, “Miracles Are to Come”

Beguiling the Senses and Enchanting the Mind: Photo Set Twelve

“Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are by somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn, a human being; somebody who said to those near him,when his fingers would not hold a brush ‘tie it into my hand’-

nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening, innocent spontaneous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers which breasts are among the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted; brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow, mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence; never to rest and never to have:only to grow.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”

—-E E Cummings, Introduction, Collected Poems

A. S. Ryatt: “Moving Out of Time”

Photographers Unknown, (Moving Out of Time)

“So—I went on, on my own—deeper and deeper into the silent Tunnel of the Ride—not so sure of where I was and yet not anxious either, not concerned about my companions nor even about the nearness of—certain friends. The trees were beech, and the buds, just breaking, fiercely brilliant, and the new, the renewed light on them—intermittent diamond—but the depths were dark, a silent Nave. And no birds sang, or I heard none, no woodpecker tapped, no thrush whistled or hopped. And I listened to the increasing Quiet—and my horse went softly on the beech-mast—which was wet after rain—not crackling, a little sodden, not wet enough to plash. And I had the sensation, common enough, at least to me, that I was moving out of time, that the way, narrow and dark-dappled, stretched away indifferently before and behind, and that I was who I had been and what I would become—all at once, all wound in one—and I moved onward indifferently, since it was all one, whether I came or went, or remained still. Now to me such moments are poetry. [Randolph Henry Ash]”

—-A.S. Byatt, Possession

Walt Whitman: “A Glimpse”

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Photographers and Artists Unknown, (A Glimpse), Gay Film Gifs

“A glimpse through an interstice caught,

Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-room around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremark’d seated in a corner,

Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,

A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,

There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.”

—-Walt Whitman, A Glimpse, Leaves of Grass

David Guterson: “The World in Another Time”

Photographers Unknown, (The World in Another Time)

“The river of his youth had been diverted and poured out broadly across the land to seep through dirt to the roots of crops instead of running in its bed. The river was no longer a river, and the desert was no longer a desert. Nothing was as it had been.

He knew what had happened to the sage-lands. He himself had helped burn them. Then men like his father had seized the river without a trace of evil in their hearts, sure of themselves but ignorant, and children of their time entirely, with no other bearings to rely on. Irrigators and fruit-tree growers, they believed the river to be theirs. His own life spanned that time and this, and so he believed in the old fast river as much as he believed in apple orchards, and yet he saw that the two were at odds, the river defeated that apples might grow as far as Royal Slope. It made no more sense to love the river and at the same time kill it growing apples than it made sense to love small birds on the wing and shoot them over pointing dogs. But he’d come into the world in another time, a time immune to these contradictions and in the end he couldn’t shake old ways any more than he could shake his name.”

—David Guterson, East of the Mountains

Ocean Vuong: “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”

Photographers Unknown, (On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous)

“That was the day I learned how dangerous a color can be. That a boy could be knocked off that shade and made to reckon his trespass. Even if color is nothing but what the light reveals, that nothing has laws, and a boy on a pink bike must learn, above all else, the law of gravity.”

—Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Born in October of 1988 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Ocean Vuong (born Vuro’ng Quóc Vinh) is a Vietnamese American post, essayist and novelist. Raised by his grandmother, he and the family fled Vietnam due to discrimination, and settled in a Philippine refugee camp, where after time, they achieved asylum in the United States and settled in Hartford, Conneticutt.

After an initial education in Glastonbury, Conneticutt, Vuong searched for an educational venue which would suit him. He first studied marketing at Pace College in New York, and finally enrolled at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. There Vuong studied nineteenth-century English literature, under poet and novelist Ben Lerner, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Vuong received his B.A. in English from Brooklyn College and his M.A. in poetry from New York University.

Ocean Vuong’s first small publication “Burnings”, published by Sibling Rivalry Press, was a 2011 “Over the Rainbow” selection for notable books on non-heterosexuality by the American Literary Association. His first full-length collection “Night Sky with Exit Wounds” was released by Copper Canyon Press in 2016, with a second printing the following year. Vuong’s first novel “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” was published by Penguin Press in June of 2019.

Openly gay and practicing Zen Buddhist, Ocean Vuong is an assistant professor in the MFA Program for Writers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was awarded fellowships from Poets House, Kundiman, the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Vuong’s awards include the Pushcart Prize in 2014, the Whiting Award for Poetry in 2016, the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2017, the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2020, and the NAAAP Pride Award in 2020.

“Besides being a vehicle for the poem’s movement, I see form as … an extension of the poem’s content, a space where tensions can be investigated even further. The way the poem moves through space, its enjambment or end-stopped line breaks, its utterances and stutters, all work in tangent with the poem’s conceit.”

—Ocean Vuong, Discussing the relationship between form and content in his work.

David Guterson: “Good Neighbors”

Photographers Unknown, (Good Neighbors)

“No one [Islanders] trod easily upon the emotions of another where the sea licked everywhere against an endless shoreline. And this was excellent and poor at the same time- excellent because it meant most people took care, poor because it meant an inbreeding of the spirit, too much held in, regret and silent brooding, a world whose inhabitants walked in trepidation, in fear of opening up…They could not speak freely because they were cornered: everywhere they turned there was water and more water, a limitless expanse of it in which to drown. They held their breath and walked with care, and this made them who they were inside, constricted and small, good neighbors.”

—-David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

Born in Seattle, Washington, it n 1956, David Guterson is an American novelist, journalist, poet and essayist. He attended the University of Washington where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and his MFA in Creative Writing. Guterson wrote “Snow Falling in Cedars” in the early morning hours over a ten year period, after which he began writing full time.

The story is set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the Puget Sound region of the Washington coast in 1954. The plot revolves around a murder case in which Japanese-American Kabuo Myamoto is accused of killing Carl Heine, a respected fisherman in the close-knit community. Told in mostly flashbacks, the interactions of the characters over the previous decades is explored.

The majority of the novel, including the trial of Myamoto, occurs during a severe snowstorm on the island during a time of deep anti-Japanese sentiments following World War II. The issues of former loves and family feuds are mixed with the bitter effects of the war and one’s sense of conscience.

Published in September of 1994, “Snow Falling on Cedars” became an immediate best-seller and won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. I was adapted in 1999 into a film of the same name which was nominated for the Best Cinematography Academy Award. Due to the book’s sexual content, it has been challenged, banned or restricted in several US school systems.

Wendell Berry: “The Real Names”

Photographer Unknown, (The Real Names)

“No settled family or community has ever called its home place an “environment.” None has ever called its feeling for its home place “biocentric” or “anthropocentric.” None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as “ecological,” deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of “ecology” and “ecosystems.” But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes, roads, creatures, and people.

And the real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is “work.” We are connected by work even to the places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is “good work,” for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth.”

—-Wendell Berry

Born in August of 1934, Wendell Erdman Berry is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012., and the 2013 recipient of the Richard C Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

Brenton Parry

Photography by Brenton Parry

Brenton Parry is a graphic designer with over twenty years of experience ranging from logos and stationary to posters and catalogues. Photography, a passion instilled by his father, has over the last fifteen years developed into a major part of his life. Parry’s male figure photography has resulted in two solo gallery exhibitions, work in two group exhibitions, a series of soft-cover male photography books published by Blurb Books, and a continuing series of downloadable male photography booklets.

Residing in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Brenton Parry works in Australia and worldwide. In 2014, he photographed the Sydney Stingers, the city’s LGBTI-inclusive water polo team to promote their annual trivia fundraising night in the Star Observer online magazine. Parry has also done product work for ASICS Sportswear and Footwear, Shimano Fishing Australia, and other companies.

More information, prints for purchase, and downloadable booklets can be found at the artist’s site located at: https://www.brentonparry.com

W. Somerset Maugham: “. . .The Sense of Strangeness”

Photographers Unknown, This Sense of Strangeness

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.”

—-W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

Dejan Stojanović: “The World is Always Open”

Photographers Unknown, A Collection; Th World is Always Open

“The world is always open,

Waiting to be discovered.”

—-Dejan Stojanović, Circling: 1978-1987

Born in March of 1959 in Peć, Serbia, Dejan Stojanović is a poet, writer, essayist, and former journalist. He attended the University of Pristina at Kosovo, earning a law degree although he was predominantly interested in the arts and philosophy. Stojanović began to privately write poetry in the late 1970s, not publishing any work until four years later in several Serbian literary magazines. In 1983, he joined his hometown literary club Karagać, first becoming its secretary and, later, its president.

Stojanović finished writing his first book of poetry,”Krugovanje (Circling)” in 1983; however, it was not published until 1993, with several poems replaced by newer ones. In early 1990, he joined the writing staff of the Serbian magazine Pogledi (Viewpoints), beginning a series of interviews with Serbian writers in Belgrade, including Momo Kapor and Nikola Milošević.

In May and June of 1990, Stojanović conducted interviews in Paris with surrealist painter Ljubomir Popović and expressionist painter Petar Omčikus. In December of 1990, he traveled to the United States to do interviews with prominent American writers, including Saul Bellow. His series of interviews, published as “Conversations” in 1999 by the Belgrade publisher Književna Reč, won the Rastko Petrović Award, presented by the Association of Writers of Serbia.

Stojanović’s poetry collections are characterized by sequences of compact, dense poems, organized carefully in a simple yet complex structure. This is especially evident in his books, such as “The Sign and Its Children”, “Oblik”, and “The Creator”, in which a relatively small number of words are repeated in different contexts. Stojanović builds new perspectives and meanings to the topics in his poems, often placing them together with a level of absurdity and paradox. Some of his collections of poems, however, have common themes, making the books, in essence, on long poem.

Gary Snyder: “The Blue Mountains March Out of the Sea”

Photographers Unknown, The Parts and Pieces Making a Whole: Set Nine

“The blue mountains are constantly walking.” Dōgen is quoting the Chan master Furong. — “If you doubt mountains walking you do not know your own walking.”

— Dōgen is not concerned with “sacred mountains” – or pilgrimages, or spirit allies, or wilderness as some special quality. His mountains and streams are the processes of this earth, all of existence, process, essence, action, absence; they roll being and non-being together. They are what we are, we are what they are. For those who would see directly into essential nature, the idea of the sacred is a delusion and an obstruction: it diverts us from seeing what is before our eyes: plain thusness. Roots, stems, and branches are all equally scratchy. No hierarchy, no equality. No occult and exoteric, no gifted kids and slow achievers. No wild and tame, no bound or free, no natural and artificial. Each totally its own frail self. Even though connected all which ways; even because connected all which ways. This, thusness, is the nature of the nature of nature. The wild in wild.

So the blue mountains walk to the kitchen and back to the shop, to the desk, to the stove. We sit on the park bench and let the wind and rain drench us. The blue mountains walk out to put another coin in the parking meter, and go down to the 7-Eleven. The blue mountains march out of the sea, shoulder the sky for a while, and slip back to into the waters.”

—-Gary Snyder, Practice of the Wild

Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “The Lived and Preceived Worlds”

Photographer Unknown, (The Lived and Perceived Worlds)

“Everything that I know about the world, even through science, I know from a perspective that is my own or from an experience of the world without which scientific symbols would be meaningless. The entire universe of science is constructed upon the lived world, and if we wish to think science rigorously, to appreciate precisely its sense and its scope, we must first awaken that experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression. Science neither has, nor ever will have the same ontological sense as the perceived world for the simple reason that science is a determination or an explanation of that world.

Scientific perspectives … always imply, without mentioning it, that other perspective – the perspective of consciousness – by which a world first arranges itself around me and begins to exist for me. To return to the things themselves is to return to this world prior to knowledge, this world of which knowledge always speaks, and this world with regard to which every scientific determination is abstract, signitive, and dependent, just like geography with regard to the landscape where we first learned what a forest, a meadow, or a river is.”

—-Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Preception

Gregory Maquire: “The Edge of Things”

R Breathe Photography, Untitled, (The Edge of Things)

“Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.”

—Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz

Image reblogged with thanks to https://thouartadeadthing.tumblr.com