The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “presence”

16 Life-Learnings from 16 Years of The Marginalian
16 Life-Learnings from 16 Years of The Marginalian

Reflections on keeping the soul intact and alive and worthy of itself.

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Kierkegaard on How to Save Yourself
Kierkegaard on How to Save Yourself

“I am, in the deepest sense, an unhappy individual who since my earliest days have been nailed fast to some suffering close to insanity.”

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Barry Lopez on the Cure for Our Existential Loneliness and the Three Tenets of a Full Life
Barry Lopez on the Cure for Our Existential Loneliness and the Three Tenets of a Full Life

“Existential loneliness and a sense that one’s life is inconsequential, both of which are hallmarks of modern civilizations, seem to me to derive in part from our abandoning a belief in the therapeutic dimensions of a relationship with place.”

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Sappho and the Fevered Heart: Anne Carson on Jealousy
Sappho and the Fevered Heart: Anne Carson on Jealousy

“…greener than grass I am and dead — or almost I seem to me.”

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In a Library: Emily Dickinson on Why We Read and the Magic of Old Books
In a Library: Emily Dickinson on Why We Read and the Magic of Old Books

A love-poem to those folds in spacetime that take us back to “when Sappho was a living girl.”

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Music and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song
Music and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song

“The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.”

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Creativity at the End: Leonard Cohen on Preparing for Death
Creativity at the End: Leonard Cohen on Preparing for Death

On that singular moment at the end of life when all creative energy is concentrated and consecrated.

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The Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We Long for in Our Existential Longing
The Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We Long for in Our Existential Longing

“…only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

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Control for Surrender: Henry Miller’s Stunning Letter to Anaïs Nin About the Value of and the Antidote to Despair
Control for Surrender: Henry Miller’s Stunning Letter to Anaïs Nin About the Value of and the Antidote to Despair

“When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it, or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance.”

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The Soul-Slaking Joy and Body-Poetry of Swimming
The Soul-Slaking Joy and Body-Poetry of Swimming

In praise of the exquisite instrument that channels “the huge chaos of sensations — sensations of temperature, water, force, light.”

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