The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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The Storm, the Rainbow, and the Soul: Coleridge on the Interplay of Terror and Transcendence in Nature and Human Nature
The Storm, the Rainbow, and the Soul: Coleridge on the Interplay of Terror and Transcendence in Nature and Human Nature

“In the hollow… I sate for a long while sheltered, as if I had been in my own study in which I am now writing: there I sate with a total feeling worshipping the power and ‘eternal link’ of energy.”

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Wander: Natascha McElhone Reads Hermann Hesse’s 100-Year-Old Love Letter to Trees in a Virtual Mental Health Walk Through Kew Gardens
Wander: Natascha McElhone Reads Hermann Hesse’s 100-Year-Old Love Letter to Trees in a Virtual Mental Health Walk Through Kew Gardens

“In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws… to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.”

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Patti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books
Patti Smith on Libraries and the Transformative Love of Books

On books, bronchitis, and a mother’s “sympathetic exasperation.”

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The Art of Centering: Potter and Poet M.C. Richards on What She Learned at the Wheel About Non-Dualism, Creative Wholeness, and the Poetry of Personhood
The Art of Centering: Potter and Poet M.C. Richards on What She Learned at the Wheel About Non-Dualism, Creative Wholeness, and the Poetry of Personhood

“Centering is a verb… an ongoing process… a way of balancing, a spiritual resource in times of conflict, an imagination… an alchemical vessel, a retort, which bears an integration of purposes, an integration of levels of consciousness.”

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Favorite Books of 2019
Favorite Books of 2019

From the hidden universe beneath our feet to delight as a countercultural force of courage and resistance, by way of Patti Smith, Toni Morrison, and the Greek myths.

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Kierkegaard on the Spiritual and Sensual Power of Music, the Essence of Genius, and the Key to a Timeless Work of Art
Kierkegaard on the Spiritual and Sensual Power of Music, the Essence of Genius, and the Key to a Timeless Work of Art

“If Mozart ever became wholly comprehensible to me, he would for the first time become wholly incomprehensible to me.”

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The Moral of Flowers: An Illustrated Victorian Encyclopedia of Poetic Lessons from the Garden
The Moral of Flowers: An Illustrated Victorian Encyclopedia of Poetic Lessons from the Garden

From the sensuous honeysuckle to the humble daisy, a lyrical journey to where nature meets human nature.

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Poet Ross Gay on the Body as an Instrument of Thought and the Delights of Writing by Hand
Poet Ross Gay on the Body as an Instrument of Thought and the Delights of Writing by Hand

In praise of the manual-mental “loop-de-looping we call language.”

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The Best of Brain Pickings 2019
The Best of Brain Pickings 2019

Love, poetry, friendship, solitude, and lots of trees.

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13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings
13 Life-Learnings from 13 Years of Brain Pickings

More fluid reflections on keeping a solid center.

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