[Image: illustrations and captions from “Radio Milks Cows, Runs Street Cars,” in the February 1931 edition of Modern Mechanix. Found it here, at the Modern Mechanix blog (it’s a bit extraordinary that such a blog even exists). To see the whole page on which the photo appeared, including more detailed text, just click on the image.]
From whiskey river:
No one yet has made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not. Still, there are indications. Among crowds, in drawing rooms, among easements and comforts and pleasures, it is seldom seen. It likes the out-of-doors. It likes the concentrating mind. It likes solitude. It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker. It isn’t that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.
(Mary Oliver [source])
…and:
Saving Daylight
Suppose for a moment you live in a land,
Amazed at what happens during summer solstice.
Very strange things begin to occur,
Instantly, there is little darkness,
Night that we are so used to
Gone; what is left is the brilliant colors.Daylight from dusk to dawn to dusk again,
Alight in all its energy and brightness.
Yes, we are north of the sixtieth parallel;
Land of the midnight sun.
I have been here before and seen things,
Gazed upon the horizon, waiting for darkness to reappear,
Holding on to summer in all its life, love and beauty;
To see it ebb once more as daylight fades to night.
(C. M. Davidson-Pickett [source])
…and (italicized portion):
There is purity in living beautifully. To indulge in the small ecstasies, the small pleasures. Silk dresses, white tea, gold, sunshine, carved crown molding. It is all malleable, atmospherically — our lives. Simplicity, blue palms, white wines, whipped espresso. You create your paradise out of all these simple luxuries, and that’s purely religious. True divinity wades in the warm oceans of bliss.
(“Dove Mother” (quoted by Linden Fern) [source])
