Tag: nudity

Thomas Mann: “Friendship and Rapport with the Inevitable”

The Black and White Collection: WP Set Nine

“Ah, peace; it was peace, after all, that he wanted! Though not the peace in an empty, hollow void, but a gentle, sunny peace filled with good, tranquil thoughts. All his tender love of life trembled through him at that moment, all the profound yearning for his lost happiness. But then he looked around at the silent, endlessly indifferent peace of nature, saw the river flowing along in the sunshine, saw the grass quivering and moving and the flowers standing where they had blossomed in order to wither and then waft away, saw everything, everything yielding to existence with that mute devotion—and he was suddenly overwhelmed with the sensation of friendship and rapport with the inevitable, which can make us superior to all destiny.” 

—Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales

Joseph Campbell: “One’s Infatuations”

Parva Scaena (Brief Scenes): Set Sixteen

“To become—in Jung’s terms—individuated, to live as a released individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one’s various life roles. ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do,’ and when at home, do not keep on the mask of the role you play in the Senate chamber. But this, finally, is not easy, since some of the masks cut deep. They include judgment and moral values. They include one’s pride, ambition, and achievement. They include one’s infatuations. It is a common thing to be overly impressed by and attached to masks, either some mask of one’s own or the mana-masks of others. The work of individuation, however, demands that one should not be compulsively affected in this way. The aim of individuation requires that one should find and then learn to live out of one’s own center, in control of one’s for and against. And this cannot be achieved by enacting and responding to any general masquerade of fixed roles.” 

-Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

Jack London: “The Sheer Surging of Life”

His Butt: Beguiling the Senses and Enchanting the Mind: Photo Set Eight

“He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

 

Thomas Mann” “Perfect Clarity in Ambiguity”

The Parts and Pieces Making a Whole: Set Six

“In our opinion, it is analytically correct, although—to use Hans Castorp’s phrase—“terribly gauche” and downright life-denying, to make a “tidy” distinction between sanctity and passion in matters of love. What’s this about “tidy”? What’s this about gentle irresolution and ambiguity? Isn’t it grand, isn’t it good, that language has only one word for everything we associate with love – from utter sanctity to the most fleshly lust? The result is perfect clarity in ambiguity, for love cannot be disembodied even in its most sanctified forms, nor is it without sanctity even at its most fleshly. Love is always simply itself, both as a subtle affirmation of life and as the highest passion; love is our sympathy with organic life, the touchingly lustful embrace of what is destined to decay – caritas is assuredly found in the most admirable and most depraved passions. Irresolute? But in God’s good name, leave the meaning of love unresolved! Unresolved – that is life and humanity, and it would betray a dreary lack of subtlety to worry about it.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

 

Susan Sontag: “A Man Lives Through His Face”

Photographers Unknown, Faces of Man: A Collection: WP Set Four

“Women do not simply have faces, as men do; they are identified with their faces. Men have a naturalistic relation to their faces. Certainly they care whether they are good-looking or not. They suffer over acne, protruding ears, tiny eyes; they hate getting bald. But there is a much wider latitude in what is esthetically acceptable in a man’s face than what is in a woman’s. A man’s face is defined as something he basically doesn’t need to tamper with; all he has to do is keep it clean. He can avail himself of the options for ornament supplied by nature: a beard, a mustache, longer or shorter hair. But he is not supposed to disguise himself. What he is “really” like is supposed to show. A man lives through his face; it records the progressive stages of his life. And since he doesn’t tamper with his face, it is not separate from but is completed by his body – which is judged attractive by the impression it gives of virility and energy.”
― Susan Sontag

 

Collection: Ten Images from Art Studio, China

“Time passes, day by day. The greatness of this country lies in the inexorable journey it has taken through time.

Time is like an enormous pot, into which all ugliness and beauty are thrown, all happiness and grief, all life and all death.

Cycle follows cycle, living life and dying death. Only the great River rolls on, unending.”
― Yo Yo, Ghost Tide

Images reblogged with many thanks to: artboy2012@163.com

Morning Run

The End of the Morning Run

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen 

 

The Stream

Photographer Unknown, (The Stream)

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories