The Marginalian
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Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower: Rilke’s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times
Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower: Rilke’s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times

“What is it like, such intensity of pain?”

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Nick Cave on the Antidote to Our Existential Helplessness
Nick Cave on the Antidote to Our Existential Helplessness

Stepping up to the subtle gestures that can redeem a day, or a life.

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Herbie Hancock’s Antidote to Burnout
Herbie Hancock’s Antidote to Burnout

“We usually define ourselves by what we do… There’s a big trip with all of that.”

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Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves
Nature and Transcendence: Emerson on How We Become Our Most Authentic Selves

“Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance.”

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Montaigne on How to Succeed at Solitude and His Antidote to the Three Great Fears That Haunt Self-Knowledge
Montaigne on How to Succeed at Solitude and His Antidote to the Three Great Fears That Haunt Self-Knowledge

“There are ways of failing in solitude as in society.”

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Seneca on Creativity: Lessons from the Bees
Seneca on Creativity: Lessons from the Bees

How to ferment our natural gifts into nectar for the world.

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The Seamstress Who Solved the Ancient Mystery of the Argonaut, Pioneered the Aquarium, and Laid the Groundwork for the Study of Octopus Intelligence
The Seamstress Who Solved the Ancient Mystery of the Argonaut, Pioneered the Aquarium, and Laid the Groundwork for the Study of Octopus Intelligence

“I armed myself with patience and courage, and only after several months managed to dissolve my doubts and see my research crowned with happy confirmation.”

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How to Savor Winter: A Century-Old Poetic Recipe for Bliss in the Bleakest Season
How to Savor Winter: A Century-Old Poetic Recipe for Bliss in the Bleakest Season

In praise of “the poetry of silence and darkness,” from which life emerges “fresher, fairer, sweeter for its long winter rest.”

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Favorite Books of 2022
Favorite Books of 2022

From Rumi to Blake to Nick Cave, by way of trees, hummingbirds, grief, and music.

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The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature
The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self: How a Circle of Friends and Lovers United Nature and Human Nature

“Mind is invisible nature, while nature is visible mind.”

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