Only So Long As It Never Becomes An End In Itself

Fig. 1. Jacques-Louis David - The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, 1789


'To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship. This is what is meant by accepting suffering. Those who, by their very nature, can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. That is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it.'

Cesare Pavese

Reality Is Not Always Probable - Or, Indeed, Likely*

Fig. 1. Isaac Layman - Sink, 2008


'Few people have the imagination for reality.'

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

* 'Reality is not always probable, or likely.' (Jorge Luis Borges)

Something Incredible Is Awaiting Your Full Attention*

Fig. 1. Vernon Fisher - Man Cutting Globe, 1992


'Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.'

Marcel Proust

* 'Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.' (Carl Sagan)

The Case Against Certitude Of A Certain Persuasion

Fig. 1. Erwin Olaf - Marie-Antoinette (1793), 2000

'It is with our judgments as with our watches: no two go just alike, yet each believes his own.'

Alexander Pope

Irony Is The First Resort Of The Sincerity Challenged

Fig. 1. Robert Longo - Untitled (Et In Arcadia Ego), 2009


'Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.'

Edwin P. Whipple

The Highest Ecstasy Is The Attention At Its Fullest*

Fig. 1. Andrea Pozzo - Fresco representing Hercules’ deeds and apotheosis in the Hercules Hall of the Liechtenstein Garden Palace, 1704-1708

'I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic - in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.'

Anaïs Nin

* 'The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.' (Simone Weil)

The World Is Mud-Luscious And Puddle-Wonderful*

Fig. 1. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster - Untitled (Atlantic), 2009


'Unbeing dead isn't being alive.'

e. e. cummings

* 'The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.' (e. e. cummings)