“…But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens. For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don’t think we can deal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being. For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth. In this way they have a certain security. And yet how much more human is the dangerous in security that drives those prisoners in Poe’s stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
-Rilke, from “Letters to a Young Poet”
i like these things
Zoo Essay, by Mia
A third grader’s letter to her teacher on why she chose not to go on a field trip to the zoo.
Two things I read today which are, at best, very loosely connected
”[…]The price these nations pay for low education of their population and lack of inclusive markets is high. They fail to mobilize their nascent talent. They have many potential Bill Gateses and perhaps one or two Albert Einsteins who are now working as poor, uneducated farmers, being coerced to do what they don’t want to do or being drafted into the army, because they never had the opportunity to realize their vocation in life.”
- a section from “Why Nations Fail” on the low education levels in poor countries
“Some places still don’t have a lot of technology, like Africa. Maybe we should donate some solar panels to them so they can make their own energy. It would be good because there’s a lot of sun there, it hardly rains. Maybe they have some good ideas but they just don’t have the materials to show them to the world.”
-an excerpt from an essay about technology, written by a ninth grader
Miss Haviland: Is there any point that you would like to make, aside from the questions that have been brought up to you before and which you’ve answered again tonight?
Mr. Sendak: I love my work very much, it means everything to me. I would like to see a time when children’s books were not segregated from adult books, a time when people didn’t think of children’s books as a minor art form, a little Peterpanville, a cutsey-darling place where you could Have Fun, Laugh Your Head Off. I know so many adult writers whom I would happily chop into pieces, who say, “Well I think I’ll take a moment and sit down and knock off a kiddy book! It looks like so much fun, it’s obviously easy…” And, of course, they write a lousy book!
It would be so much better if everyone felt that children’s books are for everybody, that we simply write books, that we are a community of writers and artists, that we are all seriously involved in the business of writing. And if everyone felt that writing for children is a serious business, perhaps even more serious than a lot of other forms of writing, and if when such books are reviewed and discussed, they were discussed on this serious level, and that we would be taken seriously as artists.
I would like to do away with the division into age categories of children over here and adults over there, which is confusing to me and I think probably confusing to children. It’s very confusing to many people who don’t even know how to buy a children’s book. I think if I have any particular hope it’s this: that we all should simply be artists and just write books and stop pretending that there is such a thing as being able to sit down and write a book for a child: it is quite impossible. One simply writes books.
– Questions to an Artist Who Is Also an Author: A Conversation between Maurice Sendak and Virginia Haviland (a public interview at the Library of Congress held in 1971)
Maurice Sendak, a great inspiration… you will be missed.
Submarine
I’m a real sucker for quirky coming-of-age movies. That said, Submarine is fantastic.
Ann Shuler, who played the kind but eccentric old lady in my my movie, passed away yesterday. I’ve known Ann since I was 9 years old and, to the extent that it’s possible to adopt members of your family, she was very much like a third grandmother to me. When I wrote the role she eventually played in my film I could only picture her doing it. I never thought I’d actually convince her, but a few weeks out I couldn’t find anyone that I thought would be even half as good, so my dad talked to her about it. I was amazed and incredibly relieved that she agreed. When her day on camera arrived Ann showed up on set and informed me that she hadn’t actually read the script and that she figured she’d just say whatever she wanted. I panicked for a minute and then we did the first take. She was incredible. Completely natural, totally charming. Three takes later she told me she was going home. And she did. However, the four takes we got with her make up some of my favorite moments of the film.
Not too long ago, I was at my parents house in between trips to other places. Ann stopped by looking for my dad and we talked for a bit about what I was up to. I mentioned that I was about to go to New York. Ann’s reply, “Golly Moses, you are cosmopolitan. Let me touch you,” seems so classic to her personality. Ann was a woman that I looked up to for a long time, strong and self-assured, but kind. She had a truly special laugh that always seemed heartfelt. She was one of the most genuine people I’ve known and the world is a little emptier for the loss of her unique presence. I will miss her.
“I think the youth vote might be locked up by the looks of this.”
if I had a lot more time on my hands I’d probably make a whole Barack + Indiana tumblr…
driving through New Mexico, or maybe Arizona - May 2011
Top Ranked Polo Players From Philadelphia’s Inner City
“This is my second home, and I need to be here if I want to be something in life,” said Kenshaun Walker, 15, who plays on the men’s team and is in his sixth year with the program. “This is my top way to get me out of Philadelphia.”
They scrimmage with college teams like Harvard, Cornell, UConn and the University of Virginia in warm-up games for the schools. They generally end up crushing their Ivy League opponents - like Harvard, which suffered a 20-3 defeat last year.
Last March, Work To Ride’s men’s high school polo team was the first all-black team to win the National Interscholastic Polo Championship.
KIDS BOOK TOUR STOP: AUSTIN, TX
The best part about living in a world where anything is possible is that one morning you’ll read on a stage to ten thousand people and later that afternoon you’ll read to a handful of children sitting in a tree in the middle of a wide open park. Both are quite valuable, and both have made me a better person.
infinitely bummed that I missed seeing Dallas Clayton in Austin.
In honor of Dr. Norman Borlaug’s birthday, I want to recommend that you read Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman. It’s one of the most inspiring and affecting books I’ve ever read.
For more than thirty years, humankind has known how to grow enough food to end chronic hunger worldwide. Yet in Africa, more than 9 million people die of hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases every year—most of them children. In this powerful investigative narrative, Wall Street Journal reporters Kilman & Thurow show exactly how, in the past few decades, Western policies conspired to keep Africa hungry and unable to feed itself. Enough is essential reading on a humanitarian issue of utmost urgency.
(Source: outcamethesun, via tinyhousesmallspace)
