Wishes are.....

“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”

— Cathy from Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

A thought......

“A society in flight from death is also in flight from life. Refusing to believe the worst will happen, we cannot see that the best requires it—that whatever makes life worthwhile, be it love, adventure, children, settling, has death as its price.” 

                           —Roger Scruton

Kip and Her Cat

 

Kip the Enchanted Cat is a fairytale about witches, curses, and cats.

🎨 Adrienne Ségur.

I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.

 

Writing Advice

"Begin with something in your range. Then write it as a secret. I’d be paralyzed if I thought I had to write a great novel, and no matter how good I think a book is on one day, I know now that a time will come when I will look upon it as a failure. The gratification has to come from the effort itself. I try not to look back. I approach the work as though, in truth, I’m nothing and the words are everything. Then I write to save my life. If you are a writer, that will be true. Writing has saved my life."

                            — Louise Erdrich

This has been my fate and the fate of many women who believed as Angela Carter.

"You are always true, but never believed, like Cassandra." — Angela Carter.

I've very fond of these colors.

 

Wallpaper with olives, lemons and pomegranates, by William Morris. Watercolor. London, England, 1862

THIS.THIS. THIS.

“a completely impractical person, caught up in endless trains of thought. All of us are fantasists, ill-equipped for life, the children as much as myself. It seems to me sometimes that we never got used to being on this earth and life is just one great, ongoing, incomprehensible blunder.”

        — W. G. Sebald

Another view on fairies.

 I enjoy Twitter for all the beautiful people I meet. Here's one of them.

A rare thing in this modern culture.

“Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society’s double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible, who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women, they can become women much earlier – and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth.” 

    The Double Standard of Aging (1972) — Susan Sontag

This is how I always feel about Percy Shelley. Always.

 

Kestrels Overcome Adversity as Chicks Hatch & Grow | Apollo & Athena | R...

Nature is amazing. Evolution is a wonder. We are all sexual creatures by biology, made to create and reproduce. We are born, we live, we die. Species come and go. Enjoy the ride while you are here.

It's pretty plain that commitment is important followed by self-discipline.

"Highly focused people do not leave their options open. They select their priorities and are comfortable ignoring the rest. If you commit to nothing, you’ll be distracted by everything." 

          — James Clear.

In a churchyard near Caernarfon.

 

   

@MorleyRA

Another possible door.

Groupthink and stories are now a challenge and not a solution.

‘None of us is as dumb as all of us.’

     (This was a note on a board at NASA referring to groupthink.)

Hermann Hesse, ( 2 July 1877 - 9 August 1962 ).

 

"No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. " Hermann Hesse.

 

I love you, you bold red, So sun-thirsty, wild and alive, In the summer scent between day and death So blooming and happily floating. — Hermann Hesse

Sometimes one has to choose.

 

       By Tom Gauld.

July 2023

“July is hollyhocks and hammocks, fireworks and vacations, hot and steamy weather, cool and refreshing swims, beach picnics, and vegetables all out of the garden.” — Jean Hersey 🌿 🍉 🏖️