#maria-popova — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #maria-popova, aggregated by home.social.
-
to be a true friend
be gentle with
the child in each other
who is not easily approached
yet will suffer and suffer
when not seen or cherished
and who will remain
a friend to you
even when you
become a stranger to the child in you--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
blessed is the person
who delights in seeing
the inner child in every one
and the magic in all creatures
who does not shun difficulty
and can turn with equal reverence
toward sorrow and joy
who can trust fear as
the balsam of courage
and pain as an instrument
for opening the heart
who can pause to notice
the delicate lustre of a lichen
and the undulations of the light
who dares to make hope
an axiom of being
and is strong enough
to be changed by love--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
a person is a silent note
in the mouth of probability
hungry for songbegin with a single sound
low as thunder
soft as pale blue
rising calm and bright
into the sky of your heart
until you become
a meteor of joy--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
this whole existence
is a a bright cry of surprise
uttered by the dark unknown
a terminal excursion
of the living flesh
from the edge of space!
to that inner place
where time is made of hope
and the light is never dead--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
to be liberated
dive toward doubt
with great eagerness
given to being surprised
or remain ossified
a safe distance
from alive--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
under the surface
of the present
exists a sea
of possibilityto reach it
a person must
wade in the muddy
rivers of change
and traverse the uncertain
without sinking(FLAMINGO. Phoenicopterus ruber)
--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
have great patience
with all attempts at changing
for patience is respect
bestowed on the present
and a kindness to time--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
encounter each other
at the outer edge of desire
with almost hopeless mercy
and a reservoir
of mutual respectrisk every safety
and every constant
for a single sunbeam
of wonder
a golden reflection
of a larger life
in the pure stream
of the possible(Great blue Feren)
--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
the whole anxiety of living
is that we imagine death
as a hand sure to strike
and cannot easily conceive
of a hand certain to hold
but in the natural arrangement
of time and chance
death is no different from life
which is merely the possible
fastened to the present
and the sunshine of now
is only bright against
the deep blue sky of neverGreat White Heren
--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
the stream of the true
is formed by
drops of doubt--
from An Almanac of Birds - #100Divinations for Uncertain Days by #MariaPopova @mariapopova (The Marginalian) https://www.themarginalian.org/almanac-of-birds/
-
“ #MariaPopova, a #politicalscience professor at McGill University and author of two books on #Russian-Ukrainian relations, sees the meetings as evidence that "we're now under hybrid attack from the #U.S." www.cbc.ca/news/politic... #Canada
ANALYSIS | U.S. interest in Al... -
Only when a privilege is abruptly taken away from us do we become aware of its existence.
-- Maria Popova (@brainpicker) -
Only when a privilege is abruptly taken away from us do we become aware of its existence.
-- Maria Popova (@brainpicker) -
"The explorer walks into darkness and feels for the edges. With instinct and ache, doubt and desire, “courage and vulnerability”, the explorer traverses 'unknown...landscapes you didn’t even know existed.'”
-
Better Company Than Caesar
What is this urge that makes us want to be seen as something we aren’t. Take this blog, for example. I am in no way a writer. Barely even a proper blogger. My professional life has very little of this kind of writing. Scientific and investor communication, sure; but not this. Why do I have — and always have had — this urge to be, and be seen, as creative? Is this some kind of performative, effortless polymathism?
Orangutan (Orangoetan) (1914) print in high resolution by Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita.Perhaps the desire is to be a modern Renaissance man. In of Montaigne’s essays is the following passage:
“They would rather talk at length about other people’s trade, instead of their own, and so hope to be seen as accomplished in yet another field. Like when Archidamus faulted Periander for abandoning his reputation as a good doctor to acquire one as a bad poet.
See how Caesar goes out of his way to make us understand his ingenuity in building bridges and siege weapons. And, conversely, how much he refrains from talking about the responsibilities of his profession, his courage, and how he led his troops. His deeds prove he was an excellent officer. He wants to be known as an excellent engineer, an entirely different occupation!
Dionysus the Elder was a great military leader, as fortune would have him. But he did everything he could to be known mainly through poetry, although he knew little of it.”
Montaigne, if not a “Renaissance man”, is a man of the Renaissance. Yet he quotes even older examples of this urge. We have leaders who are CEOs or investors and want to be known or seen as being accomplished engineers or physicists. Fields they are rather bad at. Perhaps there is a common kind of mania here. Maybe it takes hold in the minds of the mover and shakers of history. But what of us not of a geologic character?
I don’t think this applies to us regular folks. Hobbies and deep interests do provide something critical however. Happiness. I don’t really care much about being seen as an expert in writing, making pretty plots, or even performing some AI-for-biology contortion. I would like to know how to do it and how to do it well. I am led by the pleasures of intense curiosity. That is better company than Caesar, I assure you.
Maria Popova writes in one of her wonderful essays on Bertrand Russell:
‘In my darkest hours, what has saved me again and again is some action of unselfing — some instinctive wakefulness to an aspect of the world other than myself: a helping hand extended to someone else’s struggle, the dazzling galaxy just discovered millions of lightyears away, the cardinal trembling in the tree outside my window. We know this by its mirror-image — to contact happiness of any kind is “to be dissolved into something complete and great,” something beyond the bruising boundaries of the ego.’
By the end of 2023, I was in proper burnout.*1 It wasn’t until I was able to focus my mind on reading new things that recovery felt possible. Earlier this year I joined the Contraptions book club and that complete focusing of attention has buoyed my mental state even higher. Enough to write regularly and to be ever more creative at my day job.
So, I guess, the Nobel-winning philosopher and mathematician did know a thing or two when he decided to write a book with the title in The Conquest of Happiness.
“The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.”- Sidenote: I suspect Montaigne, who was about my age when he started to write also went through a midlife crisis. This sidenote is somewhere between projection and basking in reflected glory. ↩︎
#bertrandRussell #burnout #Creativity #curiosity #Happiness #history #hobbies #impostorSyndrome #mariaPopova #montaigne #personalGrowth #philosophy #polymath #renaissance #theConquestOfHappiness #writingLife
-
Natural Intelligence - Orion Magazine
Mushrooms made the world what it is
#Mycology #Mushrooms #MariaPopova #ai
https://orionmagazine.org/article/natural-intelligence/ -
JOY
by Lisel Mueller, read by Nick Cave“Don’t cry, it’s only music,”
someone’s voice is saying.
“No one you love is dying.”Recorded for The #Marginalian. Poem text and context: https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/0...
Words: #LiselMueller
Voice: #NickCave
Art: Dorothy Lathrop
Music: Claude #Debussy
#mariapopova -
> Occupied by questions of why we succumb to and normalize evil, Arendt identified as the root of tyranny the act of making other human beings irrelevant. Again and again, she returned to Augustine for the antidote: love.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/02/25/love-and-saint-augustine-hannah-arendt/
#HannahArendt #HannahArendtOnLove #LoveAndStAugustine #MariaPopova -
> But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also..
> And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.> The meaning of these lines is anything but passive for it suggests that evil can be made absurd through excess...
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/10/25/joseph-brodsky-evil-williams-college-commencement/
#MariaPopova with #JosephBrodsky reminds of #WalterWink on #TurnTheOtherCheek of #SermonOnTheMount
/HT @mariapopova
-
> The common assumptions that, if the [person] only thinks, one thought is just as good for his mental discipline as another, and that the end of study is the amassing of information, both tend to foster superficial, at the expense of significant, thought...
> The best mental habit involves a balance between paucity and redundancy of suggestions.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/08/18/how-we-think-john-dewey/
#JohnDewey #MariaPopova #TheMarginalian #BrainPickings
#SignificantThought #SuperficialThought -
"Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.”
--- #SusanSontag's line that appears in #MariaPopova's discussion of #SimoneWeil and #Science ..
https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/06/24/simone-weil-on-science-necessity-and-the-love-of-god/
#WeilOnScience #SontagOnJournalism #SontagOnWriting #SontagOnContent #PopovaOnContent #PopovaOnJournalism #PopovaOnPageViews
/HT @mariapopova -
#Sunday thoughts on changing your mind or even your life. 🌅
“…Human beings are rough drafts that continually mistake themselves for the final story, then gasp as the plot changes on the page of living.” #MariaPopova #quote #psychology #growth
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/05/17/adam-phillips-giving-up/
-
What a powerful and wonderful poem ❤️
THE WILD IRIS
by Louise GlückAt the end of my suffering
there was a door.Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth…#themarginalia #mariapopova #LouiseGlück
https://youtu.be/8waoQWf9aL8
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/04/29/louse-gluck-wild-iris/ -
"Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom." — Maria Popova — — — #MariaPopova #quote #quotes #stillness #meditation #recreation #create #daydream #boredom
-
Spell Against Indifference: A Poem
Came across this poem from one of my favorite people , Maria Popover, this Sunday with a glimmer of hope the rays of the sun ☀️ will appear.
Be sure to listen to the spoken version, accessible with the link below, and have a great day, even if the sun doesn’t appear ❤️
"The rain falls and falls
cool, bottomless, and prehistoric
falls like night —
not an ablution
not a baptism
just a small reason
to remember
all we know of Heaven…”Click the ‘alt' for the full poem (or the link.)
#poetry #poetrycommunity #poem #mariapopova #Marginalian
https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/08/20/spell-against-indifference/ -
> ... how to course-correct our civilization, so that the rise of capitalism as a global economic system based on exploitation and extraction would not corral our species into its own misery and threaten the survival of all species on an irreplaceable planet that is a miracle and not a resource.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/12/11/the-wonderful-century-alfred-russel-wallace/
#AlfredRusselWallace #EvolutionGuy #CivilizationCourseCorrection
#CourseCorrectCivilization
#IndustrialCivilization
#MariaPopova
/HT @mariapopova -
@mariapopova And for all this and more, she has my undying gratitude.
Subscribe to The Marginalian. You don’t have to read it much. Let it just flow over you over time. Like water smoothening a stone.
https://www.themarginalian.org/
#Art #Gratitude #Reading #Marginalia #Books #Reading #NaturalPhilosophy #MariaPopova
3/3 -
@mariapopova If anyone can talk about science and maths and art and life and words as being different facets of the same natural thing, it is her.
She’s the very embodiment of Syntopica.
for e.g. What do relentless persistence, witchcraft, astronomy, mathematics, science fiction, the moon landing and an undying parental love, have in common? Johannes Kepler.
Read Maria’s post to find out :)
https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/12/26/katharina-kepler-witchcraft-dream/#Art #Gratitude #Reading #Marginalia #Books #Reading #NaturalPhilosophy #MariaPopova
2/ -
When I first began reading Brain Pickings—eons ago—I would skip her commentary in the “margins” and go straight to the quotes, because that is what I wanted.
Now a days the quotes pale into insignificance as I rush to read what she has to day. If ever there was a case of the frame being more beautiful than the art it contains, it is the Marginalian’s (@mariapopova)#Art #Gratitude #Reading #Marginalia #Books #Reading #NaturalPhilosophy #MariaPopova
1/