men are allowed to be so mediocre it’s insulting on the deepest level

There is no one I’d rather be than me. From my hair to my nails to the way that I talk to the clothes I wear to my opinions and views and values to my talents and interests, I really love myself. I can’t imagine not feeling this way about myself. I really don’t want be anyone else.

“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

— Haruki Murakami

There is Florence and there is Firenze. Firenze is the place where the citizens of the capital of Tuscany live and work. Florence is the place where the rest of us come to look. Firenze goes back around two thousand years to the Romans and, at least in legend, the Etruscans. But Florence was founded in perhaps the early 1800s when expatriate French, English, Germans, and not a few Americans settled here to meditate on art and the locale—the genius of the place—that produced it. Over the next two centuries a considerable part of the rest of the world followed them for shorter visits—“visit” being derived from the Latin vistare, “to go to see,” and, further back, from videre, simply “to see”—in the form of what came to be called tourism. The Florentines are here, as they have always been, to live and work; to primp, boast, cajole, and make sardonic, acerbic asides; to count their money and hoard their real estate, the stuff—la roba—in their attics and cellars, and their secrets. We are here for the view.”

— Robert Clark, Dark Water: Art, Disaster, and Redemption in Florence 

Hey guys I just want to help out so here are some of my tips: - study everyday, even if it means just writing bullet points of what you learned - write ur notes by hand - write specific to-do lists. Make sure you break each big task in smaller ones so you don't feel so pressured or intimidated by it - drink water and have healthy snacks while studying. - have a designated space to study, also put clothes that make you comfortable but not too much so that you will still feel productive - treat yourself after accomplishing something in your to-do list - have a routine and FOLLOW it! - don't compare yourself to your friends as to how they are doing in school - have your study music - keep your room clean and organised - plan ahead every week

tips if you’re a procrastinator like me: 1. break up the assignment of task into small pieces. 2. Tell yourself that it’s easy or it won’t take very long. 3. Organise before doing homework, it gets you in a productive mood. ie: filling in your planner, writing out a wish list or to do list. 4. Listen to music that doesn’t have any lyrics or isn’t in your native language. (Basically you cant sing along or get distracted by) 5. Clean your surroundings before starting. The less the clutter the more your mind will be clear.

She needs fresh air, space, sunlight. She is full of such fiery youth, such a passion for living.”

— Renée Vivien, tr. by Jeanette H. Foster, from “A Woman Appeared To Me,”

Personal growth is achieved when you decide that every pain has been your salvation - including those you had to turn into salvation.

“The world lasts for two days; one day it’s against you, another day it’s with you. The day that it’s against you, have patience. The day that it’s with you, be humble.”

Książki: "Maksimum osiągnięć" Brian Tracy "Shantaram" Gregory David Roberts "Małe życie" Hanya Yanagihara "Pięć kilometrów do bomby. Rowerem przez Afrykę" Tomasz Budzioch, Elżbieta Wiejaczka "W pustyni i w puszczy" Henryk Sienkiewicz "W zdrowym ciele zdrowy mózg" Anders Hansen "Wege siła" Brendan Brazier "Dzieci kapitana Granta" Jules Verne

https://ashlynneeaton.com/

The fact of the matter is that I’m very picky when it comes to people I wanna share my life with… I take friendships and relationships seriously. I also really relish my solitude… I feel like this has directed me towards a more intentional way of participating in relationships. But anyway if you want to form long lasting relationships with good, honorable, interesting people…. You have to cast a wide net lol

You must allow yourself to outgrow and depart from certain eras of your life with a gentle sort of ruthlessness.”

— Katy Maxwell 

I withdraw from people and places from time to time. I need space from a world that is filled with millions of mouths that talk too much, and never have anything to say.”

— Kaitlin Foster

It’s so concerning how social-media has glamourised the worst of human attributes: vanity, exaggerated self-importance, boastfulness, materialism, deception, envy, ostentation, narcissism, superiority. Please don’t be programmed into believing that any of these traits are positive, they’re not.

high standards are pure. protection from unhappiness. nothing wrong with wanting best for yourself.

things i wish i’d been told sometimes

𓂃 your life revolves around you and it always has. if you feel the need to stop and catch your breath, do it. time moves forward, but your life will never be able to continue without you. 

𓂃 the way people talk to you about others is a direct reflection of how they talk to others about you. remember that. 

𓂃 life is too short to stay quiet. your voice carries you as much as you carry your voice. 

𓂃 nobody pays as much attention to you as you think they do. 

𓂃 nobody’s expecting you to do something useful every day. you shouldn’t expect that from yourself either. 

𓂃 nothing that matters to you is useless. if it’s important to you then it’s important, period.

𓂃 don’t live every day like it’s your last–rather like it’s your first. get to know your space, get comfortable where you aren’t yet, try new things but not everything at once. and look forward to things that are coming. 

𓂃 you’re only responsible for what you can control and influence. focus on that. 

𓂃 stop trying to be okay all the time. you do not have to be okay all the time.

𓂃 it’s more common to have a soft and protecting tummy than to have flat abs. both is healthy, both is pretty. 

𓂃 your teens are not your only chance on having a good, fulfilled, and social life. if you can’t find your place in high school you will in another environment. this isn’t where it ends. 

𓂃 you have the right to change your mind over and over and over again until you’re happy.

things you can do at any stage in life:

• love yourself
• have a fresh start
• go back to school
• recover
• make new friends
• fall in love
• go to therapy
• learn a skill
• discover your passion
• repair relationships
• change the world
• find a new hobby
• be happy

it isn’t too late for you. you’ll be okay. there’s no time limit on happiness.

“One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.”

— Margaret Mead

When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad. Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 

Focus on mastering yourself, and all other goals will fall into place

Hi! I admire you a lot, you're strong and really passionate of what you do, I'd like to be like you one day, now I'm the opposite of you. I don't know what to do in life, I'm 22 years old and I feel old, every time I try to improve my life I fail, I'm scared, I don't know anymore where to start, I lost my hopes. Do you have any suggestion for me? asked by anonymous

petrichorals:

Keep on being scared, work with your fear. Stop lying to yourself - always speak the truth, especially internally. Keep on failing but identify why you failed - change your behaviour. Accept the pain, the suffering, the uncertainty. Make your way towards the things that are a struggle but you know - you already know but you might be lying to yourself because you are afraid - will take you towards a bright future.

u know what my goal is to drink coffee in different countries

What keeps you motivated/driven? I always tend to back down and end up succumbing to laziness by my second semester (I am undergrad, sophomore) I also think this contributes to me studying a subject I no longer am interested in.

I wasn’t put on this earth to be mediocre. That’s all.

“But self-knowledge is not the remedy I prescribe to myself. I want as much self-knowledge as I can get —let me not be deceived— but self-knowledge isn’t the goal I seek. Strength, strength is what I want. Strength not to endure, I have that and it has made me weak —but strength to act.”

— Susan Sontag, from Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1964.

If you tend to flit between different interests, learn to focus long enough to develop a skill or make a contribution to your community or field, otherwise your energy will have accomplished nothing but satisfy your curiosity.

History is a better teacher than culture. 

It is astounding how so many intelligent people are ensnared in some form of self-limitation or depression. The chains you live within are self imposed. Power lives on the other side of pain. Neither pleasure nor pain can be given any influence over your liberation. Find everything that makes you feel safe, and destroy it. You must decide that you are stronger than your current conception of yourself, or accept intellectual slavery. Go where you are least at home, and conquer all that stands before you. Today’s suffering shall bring tomorrow’s sovereignty.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter that life never blossomed into something larger than itself.”

- Zadie Smith, NW

“I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree, I think. And he says-“you see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.” And I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too, I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimension, the inner structure. Also the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting-it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds; I don’t understand how it subtracts.”

— Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

“There’s an old saying, he said, about how the foreign journalist who travels to the Middle East and stays a week goes home and writes a book in which he presents a pat solution to all of its problems. If he stays a month, he writes a magazine or a newspaper article filled with ‘ifs,’ ‘buts,’ and 'on the other hands.’ If he stays a year, he writes nothing at all.”

— Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry

Don’t demand that your kids find and follow their “passion”.

Don’t demand that your kids become doctors.

Teach them to be curious, seek fulfillment from hard work, and follow through with projects.

“Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving. Moreover the writer invents himself [or herself] as a character in this form. He shapes himself from the shards of the everyday, from the truth of that daily life. Which is also a truth not to be scorned.”

— Anna Kamienska, from “In That Great River: A Notebook,” trans. Clare Kavanaugh, Poetry (June 2010)

Relaxation advice from Cal Newport’s most recent habit tune-up:

• Get away from work you normally do
  
• Focus on projects that don’t have deadlines
• Focus on interesting projects that are not stressful
• The brain needs sleep and variety, not non-activity
• The mind needs regular and sustained freedom from time pressure-induced stress

Quality of Life

I prefer the concept of “quality of life” than the concept of “happiness”. “Pursuing happiness” involves chasing feelings or outcomes that you believe you want, material or nonmaterial. But we often do not pick these wisely. Much of what we pursue is unsatisfying. It is easy to pursue either 1) pleasure, which is momentary or 2) outcomes which may not be more fulfilling than the feelings of satisfaction that accompany any achievement.

It is important to prioritize outcomes that constitute life conditions that will maximize experiences of joy, progress, and peace. It takes wisdom and self-exploration to understand what these outcomes are. We evolved to find health, family, community, and nature rewarding; these are good places to start. Contributing to a cause or developing a passion are good ones as well.

But it’s not always easy to enjoy something fully. How do we even teach ourselves to enjoy these experiences? Mindset comes first. it is equally important to maximize the way you experience. Immerse yourself in small moments of gratitude. Count positives. Keep setting goals, pushing yourself, thriving, and enjoy the feelings of satisfaction. Watch your abilities grow and the sum of the moments in your life become more beautiful.

Quality of life = Mindset -> Conditions -> Outcomes

maturity, stability, & honesty becomes more appealing as you get older.

people ask me all the time how i’m so confident and its because i stopped being afraid of myself. i stopped being afraid of expressing myself in full. i stopped being afraid of being me. i stopped being afraid of my body and the reactions that are out of my hands. i stopped being afraid of my natural features and allowed my hair to flourish and grow in all parts of my body. i turned that anxious energy that thrummed inside of me into excitement and turned my pain into power. i rebuilt my foundation from the ground up and decided that i was going to build an empire for myself because i deserve it. an empire built by my actions, decisions, and the love i choose to show up for myself with. 

The simple fact is that people who achieve excellence in their fields didn’t just have a dream. They got up at 4:00 am to practice on parallel bars or had to forgo other desirable activities and paths in order to get in six hours of violin practice a day, or stayed off several million absurd writing advice blogs with their overheated little cliques that dispense useless regurgitated maxims and empty praise and decide to actually confront their own thoughts on a page. Or they read Beowulf and Dante carefully and deeply when they didn’t see any point, since all they were interested in was Sylvia Plath, because someone of more experience and wisdom told them to do so. I don’t know whether we’re overly lazy, stupid, or childish these days. But the idea of preparing oneself for excellence has somehow disappeared. So – my advice to dreamers: Don’t just follow your dreams. Earn them. Do what it takes to achieve it. Work for it. Don’t just sit there and dream because if you do, it will never, ever be yours.”

— Harrison Solow, Don’t Follow Your Dream

• Remove the perverse pressure to enjoy things
• End the need for efficiency and simply be efficient 
• Beautiful experiences for their own sake
• Restrict technology use
  
• More challenge, more exposure, more things to be curious about

“In order to be free you simply have to be so, without asking permission of anybody. You have to have your own hypothesis about what you are called to do, and follow it, not giving in to circumstances or complying with them. But that sort of freedom demands powerful inner resources, a high degree of self-awareness, a consciousness of your responsibility to yourself and therefore to other people.”

Andrei Tarkovsky, from “The artist’s responsibility,” Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (University of Texas Press, 1987)

The way you treat animals matters to me.

We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

 

“There are two reasons why people don’t talk about things; either it doesn’t mean anything to them, or it means everything.”

— Luna Adriana

One real person is enough.

That dream was planted in your heart for a reason, tend to it, love it, wait for it to bloom.

TO LEARN YOURSELF, ASK YOURSELF:

1. What are my five best qualities?

2. In my life, what do I desire, ultimately?

3. When it comes to life, what ‘moves’ me?

4. What does the evolved “me” look like?

5. Am I ‘proud’ of myself? Why (not)?

that feeling of developing a deep curiosity about someone is not talked about enough. there are a lot of people you will find interesting, but not many you will be truly fascinated by. cherish it.

The entire idea of rereading implies just such a likeable and progressive assumption about life, one that’s meant to keep us interested in living it: namely, that as you get further along, you find out more valuable stuff; familiarity doesn’t always give way to dreary staleness, but often in fact to celestial understandings; that life and literature both are layered affairs you can work down through.
[…]
Rereading a treasured and well-used book is a very different enterprise from reading a book the first time. It’s not that you don’t enter the same river twice. You actually do. It’s just not the same you who does the entering. By the time you get to the second go-round, you probably know—and know more about—what you don’t know, and are possibly more comfortable with that, at least in theory. And you come to a book the second or third time with a different hunger, a more settled sense about how far off the previously-mentioned great horizon really is for you, and what you do and don’t have time for, and what you might reasonably hope to gain from a later look.

”

Richard Ford on rereading. Lest we forget, Nabokov put it best: “A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.

If you genuinely enjoy being alone, do you ever wonder if it is an inherent part of your character or if it stems from feeling inescapably lonely in the first place until you taught yourself to enjoy the peace and happiness one can find in solitude? what if the reason you now prefer & choose solitude at every turn is because you were a very lonely child, or teenager, not by your own choice, and that’s how you learnt to thrive and grow, so you no longer know if you can do that around people? There might also be an element of personal pride, an unconscious “you can’t fire me I quit” point when your brain decided to switch your feelings about solitude from distress to relief. I often find myself defending my love of being alone, to people who worry that I can’t possibly be happy to live in an isolated house in the woods; I insist that I do! I really do specifically enjoy the isolated factor and chose to live here because of it, but then I wonder how to differentiate an ingrained love of solitude from an acquired ability to thrive off unchosen loneliness, to learn from it and be nourished by it; to what extent it might be a form of contentment built on a bedrock of resignation.

Live with your century, but do not be its creature. Work for your contemporaries, but create what they need, not what they praise.”

— Friedrich Schiller, Aesthetic Education of Man

when marina tsvetaeva said “wings are freedom only if they are open in flight. on one’s back they are a heavy weight”

The most important thing about architecture is the mark you make, or don’t make, in the landscape. And then the other thing is how the building might nurture you, how it might help your soul, or give you the ability to understand your soul.

—

Peter Stutchbury

…what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing.

—

Andrei Tarkovsky

20 MOVIES WHICH FEATURE BEAUTIFUL ARCHITECTURE

Part # 1: HOUSES

The purpose of this blog has always been to explore, through film, buildings that we may not have the chance to visit in person. With many of us stuck at home right now, that kind of cinematic escape feels more appealing than ever, so here’s a bumper list of some of my all-time favourite residences in movies.

1. I AM LOVE (2009) A Jill Sander-clad Tilda Swinton is the matriach of a wealthy Milanese family, living in Piero Portaluppi’s 1935 Villa Necchi.

2. A SINGLE MAN (2009) Architectural enthusiast Tom Ford teams up with a Mad Men production designer, and casts John Lautner’s 1949 Schaffer Residence in a starring role.

3. COLUMBUS (2017) Along with several other Modernist icons, this sylish indie beautifully showcases Eero Saarinen’s Miller House.

4. CONTEMPT (1965) Adalberto Libera’s Casa Malaparte stars as the island home of Jack Palance’s sleazy movie producer, and the venue for his seduction of Brigitte Bardot’s Camille.

5. BEGINNERS (2010) Neutra’s Lovell Health House (which also appears as the home of Pierce Patchett in LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997)) is here cast as a much-loved family residence, a role rarely assigned to modern architecture in films.

6. FRACTURE (2007) Peter Tolkin’s Sherman Residence stars alongside Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins in this legal cat-and-mouse tale.

7. THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998) Modernist architect John Lautner provides the villian’s Lair: Jackie Treehorn lives in the 1969 Sheats-Goldstein Residence.

8. THE GIFT (2015) This engaging twist on the home invasion genre unfolds almost entirely within David Clark’s Mid Century Sherman Oaks House.

9. BLADERUNNER (1982) Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1924 Ennis House provides the exteriors for Deckard’s apartment, and its Mayan-inspired blocks were used as a design cue for many other elements of the production.

10. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1968) The Modernist Vandamm house remains one of cinema’s most iconic villain’s lairs. It was actually an elaborate set, designed to resemble the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose style Hitchcock wanted to evoke, but whose fee he could not afford.

11. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011) As per usual, the bad guy lives in a stark, minimalist mansion - in this case John Robert Nilsson’s beautifully-sited 2009 Villa Överby.

12. BOTTLE ROCKET (1996) In Wes Anderson’s first feature, “rich kid” Bob Mapplethorpe lives in Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1958 Gillins House.

13. GHOSTWRITER /THE GHOST (2010) The contemporary residence where this atmospheric thriller takes place was actually not a house, but a set, built amongst sand dunes.

14. FERRIS BEULLER’S DAY OFF (1987) Cameron lives in the A. James Speyer- designed Ben Rose House, built in 1953. The pavilion was added in the 70′s as a showcase for the actual owner’s sports car collection.

15. THE ICE STORM (1996) The Carver family’s 1970′s glass and steel residence is of the Philip Johnson knock-off variety, but still offers beautiful views through plate glass to surrounding woodland.

16. MON ONCLE (1958) In this, as in several of Jaques Tati’s films, modern architecture is beautifully showcased, yet simultaneously cast as the butt of the joke.

17. MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (1988) The first time i saw this, I coveted the idyllic Japanese country house as much as any ‘real’ building i’d seen on celluloid, with its adjacent bathhouse and study opening into the garden.

18. EXHIBITION (2013) The story of two artists’ relationship with their Modernist London townhouse, this beautifully-shot film is striking in its austerity, minimalism and restrained pace.

19. PARASITE (2019) A minimalist hilltop mansion in Seoul becomes a vessel for a cinematic exploration of social inequality.

20. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971) Reminiscent of a early-Bond Ken Adam set, John Lautner’s Elrod House provides the venue for some acrobatic vengeance from scantily-clad villains Bambi and Thumper.  Photo: Casa Malaparte by Francois Halard

MOVIES WITH A MINIMALIST AESTHETIC

My mood is easily impacted by what I’m watching or reading, and I’ll often choose a film based purely on the kind of spaces I want to virtually inhabit for a couple of hours. Aesthetically, minimalism tends to make me feel calmer, and some of the films below have that effect (even when the nature of their subject matter is just the opposite…)

1. GATTACA (1997) This futuristic world is assembled from iconic elements of California’s architectural past - the characters glide down minimalist roadways in electrified Citroens and inhabit monumental Brutalist, Futurist or International Style structures - utilised selectively to reflect the film’s thematic world of authoritarianism, social engineering, and antiseptic perfectionism. 

2. AMERICAN PSYCHO (2000) Minimalism is rare in an 80′s-set movie, and here it’s intended to reflect the obsessive narcissism (and inscrutable facade) of a homicidal maniac. Toronto stands in for Manhattan, and Mies Van Der Rohe’s Toronto–Dominion Centre features as an apartment building coveted by the monochrome-loving psychopath.

3. THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE (2015-2017) This TV series has a distinctive aesthetic and a love of minimalist architecture and fashion- especially where these can be used to represent chilly and impersonal beauty. Its glass towers and sparse interiors can feel over-stylised, but they do embody an antiseptic elegance which is in line with the show’s themes. Even though the second series features more striking architecture, Series 1 is more effective, because Riley Keough’s great performance provides a counterpoint to the visual austerity.

4. INTERIORS (1978) Unlike most Woody Allen films, production design plays an essential thematic and narrative role here. There may be nothing uplifting in the bleak, subdued tale of a waspish interior designer and her slowly imploding family, but the cool, sparse, perfectionism of the world she has constructed is nonetheless compelling (and inspiring). 

5. ENEMY (2013) In this wilfully cryptic but stylish film, Denis Villeneuve created an ethereal and obliquely sinister Toronto full of deserted apartment complexes and inhospitable brutalism: a hazy, empty, dream city presided over by a giant wraith-like spider.

6. THE PHANTOM THREAD (2018) Although Woodcock’s dresses are elaborate, the interiors and overall feel of the film are spare and meticulous, especially within the Georgian townhouse where much of it takes place. This atmosphere is accentuated by the slow, considered, nature of the performances by Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day‑Lewis.

7. PLAYTIME (1967) Jaques Tati poked fun at Modern architecture, but depicted it onscreen more beautifully than perhaps any other filmmaker has. This classic comedy might be slow-moving and subtle by contemporary standards, but it definitely rewards our patience. 

8. MOON (2009) Movies set in space often favour an aesthetic of restrained Modernism. This lean and stylish thriller (from the son of Ziggy Stardust himself) has a particularly appealing, understated look.

9. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) You can’t get much more minimalist than the monolith. And in a particularly Kubrickian take on product placement, major 1960′s manufacturers and furniture designers were invited to create projected versions of how their products might look decades later in the year 2001. Obviously, pretty much everyone thought ‘Less is More’ would be the look of the future.

10. MANHATTAN (1977) The neuroses of 1970′s NY intellectuals plays out against an uncluttered monochrome backdrop of low-key interiors and spectacular urban architecture. All of the female characters - Meryl Streep’s especially - are icons of understated style. 

11. BEGINNERS (2010) Neutra’s Lovell Health House evades it’s ‘villain’s lair’ typecasting to a portray a much-loved family home, in perfect complement to this film’s soft, minimal feel.

12. ARCHIPELAGO (2010) The only movie on this list whose action is even more sparse than its aesthetic. This is director Joanna Hogg’s trademark - visually beautiful, but incredibly slow and understated dramas. Here, Tom Hiddleston and co. are on a rancorous family holiday in the Isles of Scilly. (In the later EXHIBITION (2013), they’re in a Modernist London townhouse).

13. ALIEN (1979) Though usually associated with H R Giger’s elaborately beautiful alien set-pieces, to me this movie also has a great soft minimalist vibe, from the muted futurism of the ship’s living spaces, to Sigourney Weaver’s white cotton singlet and knickers combo.

14. PANIC ROOM (2002) I’ve always loved the atmosphere of ‘moving in’ films: acres of empty wooden floors, bare walls, and stacked boxes. This is the ultimate, as Jodie Foster and a pre-teen Kristen Stewart relocate to the gloomy beauty of the sparsest Upper West Side ‘Townstone’ imaginable.

15. SINGLE WHITE FEMALE (1992) The overall aesthetic of this, in terms of both fashion and architecture, is a kind of pared-back 90′s ‘Atelier Chic’. (Was it really customary in the ‘90′s to specify your skin colour in a roommate ad though?!)

16. HEADHUNTERS (2012) In this Norwegian thriller, the protagonist lives in a Modernist house, the muted interiors of which were presumably chosen by his gallery-owner wife, who styles herself in an equally chic, understated manner. This serene aesthetic proves to be totally at odds with the gory and chaotic action which unfolds.

17. BASIC INSTINCT (1992) One in a series of Sharon Stone films which were shockers from a critical standpoint (SLIVER, anyone?) but which had an appealing, pared-back look - sort of Alfred Hitchcock meets 90′s minimalism, and which starred a super chic, super brainy Stone as a kind of R rated Grace Kelly. 

18. Unembellished, ‘futuristic’ Modernism is often a popular choice in sci fi movies. It’s been done with varying degrees of success - always more effective when the aesthetic feels like a considered and original part of the film’s world, rather than just derivative visual shorthand for ‘the future’. Some additional examples to those above include: EX MACHINA (2014), MINORITY REPORT (2002), SOLARIS (1976), TRON LEGACY (2010).   (Images: York University, Toronto by Vik Pahwa (The Girlfriend Experience S2), Still from Interiors, 1978.)

20 GREAT FILMS FOR A CINEMATIC CITY BREAK (PART #2)

Given that in-person trips are not an option right now, these are our chance to take a cinematic urban holiday. The films below are those that missed out on PART #1 of this list, in many cases because they offer a slightly darker urban experience.

1. ROME: THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY (1999) This film steeps us in the atmosphere of 1950′s Italy  - or rather, the version of it that our wealthy ex-pat characters enjoy. Despite his personal demons, the Rome we see as Tom Ripley explores it is the elegant and sun-drenched city of his dreams.

2. JAKARTA: THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1982) Peter Wier brings his customary lyricism to this atmospheric portrait of the Indonesian city on the cusp of a communist uprising.

3. NEW YORK: THE WARRIORS (1979) A gang are forced to travel, mostly on foot, from the Bronx to Coney Island, through the territories of militant rivals. The city they traverse is rendered as a dystopian extension of the real-life problems of violence and urban decay in 1970′s New York City.

4. LOS ANGELES: NIGHTCRAWLER (2014) As in fellow neo-noir DRIVE (2011), nocturnal LA is a character in its own right, with ruthless cameraman Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) prowling the streets in search of lucratively grisly footage.

5. LONDON: BLOWUP (1967) Michelangelo Antonioni’s first film in English is a meditation on voyeurism and perception, and also an iconic portrait of Mod 1960′s London. Like his globetrotting THE PASSENGER (1975), it makes for an unusual city film, due to its pervasive sense of solitude and emptiness.

6. SHANGHAI: LUST CAUTION (2008) Ang Lee’s espionage thriller is set against a backdrop of colonial architecture within 1940′s Shanghai, as the city struggles against its Japanese occupiers.

7. CITY OF GOD, RIO: CITY OF GOD (2002) A visceral journey into the 1970’s slums of Rio de Janeiro, with a predominantly amateur cast that included residents of the City of God Favela itself.

8. SAIGON: THREE SEASONS (1999). A lyrical exploration of the past, present, and future of the Vietnamese capital, as characters struggle with the aftermath of war, and the onslaught of Westernisation and capitalism.

9. PRAGUE: THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988) A sexual, moral and political drama connects three individuals in this adaptation of Milan Kundera’s novel, set against the backdrop of socialist liberalisation in 1960′s Prague.

10. LOS ANGELES: CHINATOWN (1974) Roman Polanski paints a sun-soaked and beautiful (if conceptually bleak) picture of municipal corruption in 1930′s LA.

11. NEW YORK: TAXI DRIVER (1976) Scorcese shot this film in New York City during a heatwave and a garbage strike. He has said that he sought to create an on-screen world that felt like a dream or a drug-induced reverie.

12. PARIS: BREATHLESS (1960) The French capital stars alongside Jean Seberg and Jean Paul Belmondo in this heavily improvised New-Wave classic.

13. LOS ANGELES: LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997). Like Chinatown, this is a beautiful and visually pristine, but seedy, incarnation of retro-Los Angeles.

14. SAIGON: THE LOVER (1992) Although it’s an underwhelming adaptation of the novel, this film makes the list because it does create an evocative and atmospheric rendering of 1920’s Saigon.

15. ISTANBUL: CLIMATES (2006) A sombre but beautifully filmed depiction of the end of a relationship, set against the vivid backdrops of summer in Kas and winter in Istanbul.

16. MEXICO CITY: Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN (2001) Although it’s primarily a road movie, the opening and closing sections of this film take place in a socially restive Mexico City, and set the scene for many of the cultural and political themes explored throughout.

17. LOS ANGELES: HEAT (1995) Amongst the countless movies filmed in LA, this is one of a handful in which the city itself it is a central character. Al Pacino plays cat and mouse with Robert De Niro through a series of iconic urban locations.

18. NEW YORK: DO THE RIGHT THING (1989) Spike Lee’s Brooklyn boils over on the hottest day of summer.

19. HAVANA: BEFORE NIGHT FALLS (2000) Julian Schnabel ’s portrait of the exiled Cuban writer unfolds in a lovingly-rendered 1950′s Havana, during the Cuban Revolution.

20. COPENHAGEN: COPENHAGEN (2014) Despite the (intentionally) unlikeable protagonist, and the uncomfortable romantic pairing, this ultimately makes for a sweet and life-affirming visit to the title city. 

‘Bonus: MIAMI’: SCARFACE (1983) Few films have a more iconic association with this city, which itself becomes a central character, but after objections from Florida officials, who feared the antics of Tony Montana might be seen as typical of the population as a whole (!), the majority of the movie ended up being shot in LA. (Photo: vanityfair via Pinterest)

1. Do you ever wish you were someone else?

I wish I could experience others’ lives within my current mind. I would want to interpret them in the context of my value system/knowledge base. Otherwise, not a chance. My mind is a machine that lets me enjoy life. Sometimes I wish I were less cerebral/creative, but that’s usually fleeting and more out of frustration with whether I will ever feel that I’ve reached my potential.

12: What do you think about the most?

How to create conditions of (physical, social, emotional) well-being in a secular society. How a person in xyz circumstances can develop awareness of their thoughts/emotions

21: Do you believe in love at first sight?

No. Even if you think it’s love at first sight, the subsequent falling in love is only possible if they’re meeting your needs/standards in other ways. If you see a beautiful person but then despise their personality, you would never even have to opportunity to retrospectively look back and call it love at first sight. You can only do that if you end up loving them. Therefore, it’s meeting your needs/standards that makes it love, not the first sight. Which isn’t a particularly useful statement.

49: Where’s the most magical place on earth? 

Beautiful places are beautiful because they evoke feelings of reverence (for nature, God, etc.). I’m not religious, but the feeling of stepping into a church or mosque is magical. I want to visit a monastery one day.

Hold onto your values until they stop serving you. Question your values often, replace them when you lose conviction in their worth. Pause. Center yourself. Do not compromise your standards, keep raising them and striving upward. Do not live up to your environment, do not escape it either. Create an inner environment that reflects your values and let it radiate outward. Hold your ground. Have the frame to provide influence, but be receptive to those that fit your goals.

from “ask polly: why should i keep going?”

I have never understood people who don’t have aspirations to become the best at whatever field they’re in.

- Tom Ford

 

 

an author i love just tweeted about how “big joy and small joy are the same” and how she was just as content the other night eating chocolate and cuddling her dog as she was on her Big Trip to new york and honestly. i think that’s it. this morning i was listening to an audiobook while baking shortbread in my joggers and i realised i really didn’t care what Big Things happened in my future as long as i could keep baking and reading at the weekend and maybe that is the kind of bar we have to set to guard ourselves against disappointment. just appreciate and cherish the mundane stuff and see everything else as a bonus.

not to be all fake deep but tumblr honestly feels like a home to me. it’s different from any other social media. it’s timeless. it has bought me a lot of comfort and sense of community and belonging during hard times. even just reblogging pretty pictures and poetry feels so soothing and like an escape. the stuff I read on here genuinely inspires and motivates me. I grew up using this site idk it’s like a part of me… I could delete all other social media and not be hugely affected because they’re all just surface level stuff but tumblr is the one that I have an actual attachment to. I would be actually heartbroken if they ever decided to delete this site

as the colder months approach: i wish you all a healthy, calm end of the year. i wish you tasty cups of tea, comfortable clothes, warm beds, nutritious meals in safe homes, good music, new friends and unwavering health. you deserve good things now.

The greatest gift you can give yourself is to reach your full potential

determined to do
the only thing you could do - 
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver, The Fire in Dream Work

being individuals together is so intimate. let’s read different books but curled up next to each other, let’s visit a coffee shop so you can study & i can write, let’s just be near each other

You will answer your big life questions for yourself. The voices around you will only contribute to your database, and from them you will draw patterns that converge into an answer.

Question your fears. Fears come from intuition, which come from experiences, which cannot be generalized.

If one is ungrateful for what he has, he is unlikely to be grateful to receive anymore.

When someone has no sense for graciousness and instead  believes that everything is owed to him, no amount of benefit is enough to impress him. 

There are young heirs of millions who despise their parents.   This is quite often the fault of those parents themselves, who failed to impart the right kind of values into their children.

To believe that the world owes you everything is to permanently alienate yourself from thankfulness which is the chief joy of this life. It is to chain yourself to a misery that will be exploited by others but produce no benefit for yourself. 

“To believe that the world owes you everything is to permanently alienate yourself from thankfulness which is the chief joy of this life.”

You’re ruining someone else

because you want them to be another you.

— Juliet Cook, from “Chicken Corset,” NEO Goddesses

Prioritize character development and all your decisions can be aligned with goals you chose for yourself, based on your values, rather than from external pressure. From this place, progress comes more easily and is more rewarding.

“To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.”

— George Santayana

If by intellectual you mean somebody who works only with his head and not with his hands, then the bank clerk is an intellectual and Michelangelo is not. And today, with a computer, everybody is an intellectual. So I don’t think it has anything to do with someone’s profession or with someone’s social class. According to me, an intellectual is anyone who is creatively producing new knowledge. A peasant who understands that a new kind of graft can produce a new species of apples has at that moment produced an intellectual activity. Whereas the professor of philosophy who all his life repeats the same lecture on Heidegger doesn’t amount to an intellectual. Critical creativity—criticizing what we are doing or inventing better ways of doing it—is the only mark of the intellectual function.”

— Umberto Eco, “The Art of Fiction, No. 197”, The Paris Review (Summer 2008, No. 185)

reading about random things. educating yourself on cultures that died ages ago. excitement in learning new languages. having a cup of hot coffee/tea on a rainy sunday morning. staying up late to finish reading that one book. quoting shakespeare for no specific reason. listening to slow music while doing school work. singing your favorite song off key when no one is watching. smiling at animals. wearing clothes that makes you feel comfortable. laying on bed after a long tiring day. late night drives on empty roads. complimenting strangers. helping an elderly person to cross the road. hugging your best friend. smell of earth after rain. making others laugh. holding hands. 

What is this place between hopeless romantic and strong independent individual

I call it the Jane Austen heroine

Smoked a cigarette tonight, alone on my balcony.

It felt strange.

It felt as if I was playing a role, the old me, the self I was years ago, in the parisian fog of my late teenage years.

It’s not me anymore.

I’ve never had this feeling before. I’ve changed. It’s not me anymore.

Literally just romanticize your own life. What’s stopping you. Who will care. Commit to enjoying things. 

To me, success isn’t outscoring someone, it’s the peace of mind that comes from self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best. That’s something each individual must determine for himself.

— Steve Andreas

0 books I want to read in 2019:

1. The Bible and The Book of Mormon (My goal is at least 1 text per major religion)
2. To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
   
3. Deep Nutrition  (Catherine Shanahan)
   
4. The Anxiety Disease (David Sheehan)
5. Maps of Meaning (Jordan Peterson) 
   
6. Either/Or (Soren Kierkeegard)
7. Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
8. Dominican Migration (Frank Graziano) (A random textbook I never finished)
9. All books I’m currently reading, i.e. The Book of Joy (Douglas Adams), Silver on the Tree (Susan Cooper), Atonement (Ian McEwan), 12 Rules for Life (Jordan Peterson)
   
10. Recipe books so I can nail domesticity before starting graduate school
    

Overall my goals are

• Finish full novels rather than excerpts. It’s more rewarding to see a book to completion and appreciate the circularity in its themes
• Get through more classic literature
• Start reading books with practical value (i.e. Deep Nutrition)

I’m also gravitating towards books that don’t reflect my values but rather perspectives I don’t have and want to have

Consider yourself tagged if you’re following me and happen to rea

when friedrich nietzsche said “your whole and most personal love: your whole love shelters and saves and nourishes. where your whole love is, there is also your whole virtue”

Recognized how much blank spaces in my day need to be filled with activity rather than anxious contemplation and needless intellectualising

As you get older, your life is not only an outcome of your actions, but you are an EXAMPLE of the consequences, and the values that accompany them (good or bad)

Whatever your morals and whatever your character, you cannot escape embodying them, for you have LIVED THEM OUT. 

- Alexander J.A. Cortes

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

— Emerson

Looking back, why have I spent so much of my adolescent and young adult life on poetry, philosophy, literature? On words and affirmations? I relied on them at the time, but not anymore. Did I ever need them? Literature can save people, but action is faster.

And the rest of it on analysis, or deep in nostalgia, or simply not present. A lot of it was beautiful because I love the aesthetics of writing but I wonder whether a lot of it amounts to nothing. I can’t tell. How much life have I sacrificed by living in my head?

Was it wise to make life decisions for the sake of growth? What about knowledge? Those are qualitatively different. The second refers to life decisions I made solely to develop my model of the world via intuitions gained from diverse experiences. At minimum, these decisions led to the contentedness of being justified in the ends, if not the means.

Why didn’t I just do what made me happy? Maybe a simpler concept of happiness is more useful.

Problematic as he may be, Nietzsche was right about will to power: you either push yourself into existence or become increasingly trapped within yourself. I still do think most people today have lost the grand sense of meaning that seems to permeate the writings of our ancestors, but the people I know that seem to experience the most fulfilled lives rarely stop to ask themselves philosophical (cowardly?) questions about metaphysics or an ultimate telos for humanity. They simply act on their convictions—they push their convictions into existence—and that honestly might be enough.

I was deep into philosophy back in the day and it wasn’t until I realized the above that I started to enjoy life and get somewhere.

Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity: posing problems objectively and coolly is part of its inheritance, for Buddhism comes after a philosophic movement which spanned centuries. The concept of ‘God’ had long been disposed of when it arrived. Buddhism is the only genuinely positivistic religion in history. This applies even to its theory of knowledge (a strict phenomenalism): it no longer says ‘struggle against sin’ but, duly respectful of reality, 'struggle against suffering.’ Buddhism is profoundly distinguished from Christianity by the fact that the self-deception of the moral concepts lies far behind it. In my terms, it stands beyond good and evil.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

You need a rest. You need empty moments in which you tolerate your anxiety and circling thoughts until they slow down and stop circling. You need slow, quiet activities that ground you and remind you to accept yourself in spite of huge obstacles and bad thoughts. You need to put solutions out of your mind for now, and engage in activities that have nothing to do with your ego. You need habits that strengthen your patience and focus, but also feel real and not arbitrary. You need to abandon your glorious future and build your imperfect present instead.

Ask Polly: “I’m Lazy, Reckless and Addicted To Social Media. Help!”

https://lithub.com/against-catharsis-writing-is-not-therapy/

https://www.theawl.com/2013/11/ask-polly-help-im-the-loneliest-person-in-the-world/

https://www.theawl.com/2014/03/ask-polly-my-boyfriend-thinks-im-ugly/