Josie

“Going back to California is not like going back to Vermont or Chicago; Vermont and Chicago are relevant constants, against which one measures one's own change. All that is constant about the California of my childhood is the rate at which it disappears...”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“When I left New York (in June 1942) I became the permanent guest of Margaret and Gilbert Neiman, at Beverly Glen, Los Angeles. My resources then were completely exhausted. The cabin at Beverly Glen, which is contiguous to Bel Air Estates-- the Gold Coast, so to speak-- was a delightful place. When the Neimans left for Colorado I shared the cabin with John Dudley of Kenosha. It was a bad period for me in many ways, relieved only by the itch to paint. To go to Hollywood and Vine from the Glen was like making a journey to Alaska. To shop, I went to Westwood Village or to Beverly Hills, usually on foot. Twice I was offered the gift of a car but refused. Finally, largely because Dudley was lazy, I bought one for forty dollars. It lasted ten days and then we left it in a ditch beside the road.”
― Henry Miller, Remember to Remember

“Go to the limits of your longing
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“From my viewpoint, by far the greatest challenge facing the young today is that of responding and conforming only to their own most delicately insistent intuitive awarenesses of what the truth seems to them to be, as based on their own experiences and not on what others have interpreted to be the truth regarding events of which neither they nor others have experience-based knowledge.

This also means not yielding unthinkingly to 'in' movements or to crowd psychology. This involves assessing thoughtfully one's own urges. It involves understanding, but not being swayed by, the spontaneous group spirit of youth. It involves thinking before acting in every instance. It involves eschewing all loyalties to other than the truth and love through which the cosmic integrity and absolute wisdom we identify inadequately by the name 'God' speaks to each of us directly-- and speaks only through our individual awareness of truth, and through our most spontaneous and powerful emotions of love and compassion.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller, Education Automation: Freeing the scholar to return to his studies