The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Search results for “tree”

The Day Hermann Hesse Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Tree
The Day Hermann Hesse Discovered the Meaning of Life in a Tree

“It was the great and eternal made visible: a confluence of opposites, their fusing together in the fire of reality. It meant nothing… or, rather, it meant everything… and it was beautiful, it was happiness and meaning… like an earful of Bach or an eyeful of Cézanne.”

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How to Face the Years with Confidence: The Mystery of the World’s Most Majestic Tree
How to Face the Years with Confidence: The Mystery of the World’s Most Majestic Tree

“The calm deposition of the rings… has gone on millimeter by millimeter for millennium after millennium — advancing ripples in the tide of time.”

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Of Trees, Solitude, Love, Loss, and the Stubborn Symphony of Aliveness: The Best of Brain Pickings / The Marginalian 2021
Of Trees, Solitude, Love, Loss, and the Stubborn Symphony of Aliveness: The Best of Brain Pickings / The Marginalian 2021

From the Stoics to the snails, by way of music, matter, and the mind.

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Women in Trees: Sweet and Subversive Vintage Photographs of Defiant Delight
Women in Trees: Sweet and Subversive Vintage Photographs of Defiant Delight

The chance-anthropology of a secret tribe.

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Kinship: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Love Poem to Trees, Transience, and Eternity
Kinship: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Love Poem to Trees, Transience, and Eternity

A lyrical reminder that “the word for world is forest” and the feeling of forest is love.

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Trees at Night: Rebecca Solnit Reads and Reflects on a Stunning Century-Old Poem by the Young Harlem Renaissance Poet Helene Johnson
Trees at Night: Rebecca Solnit Reads and Reflects on a Stunning Century-Old Poem by the Young Harlem Renaissance Poet Helene Johnson

An eighteen-year-old prodigy’s song of praise for the eternal consolation of trees.

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Rebecca Solnit on Trees and the Shape of Time
Rebecca Solnit on Trees and the Shape of Time

“Trees are an invitation to think about time and to travel in it the way they do, by standing still and reaching out and down.”

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Winter Trees as a Portal to Aliveness
Winter Trees as a Portal to Aliveness

“Eons must have lapsed before the human eye grew keen enough and the human soul large enough to give sympathetic comprehension to the beauty of bare branches laced across changing skies.”

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Drawing a Tree: Uncommon Vintage Italian Meditation on the Existential Poetics of Diversity and Resilience Through the Art and Science of Trees
Drawing a Tree: Uncommon Vintage Italian Meditation on the Existential Poetics of Diversity and Resilience Through the Art and Science of Trees

A subtle sylvan celebration of how our hurts and our healings shape the singular beauty of our character.

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The Music of Trees: Improvisation, Iteration, and the Science of Immortality
The Music of Trees: Improvisation, Iteration, and the Science of Immortality

“Potentially, every tree is immortal.”

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