“Mastering the full range of subjects taught in medieval universities normally required many years of hard and expensive study. From the thirteenth century on, however, an anonymous work known as the Ars notoria promised, through diagrams, incantations, and arcane rituals, to rapidly transmit to scholars the total knowledge of anything they might need.”
“And though it’s always sweet sorrow to part, you know you’ll always remain in my heart, Good night, sleep tight and pleasant dreams to you, Here’s a wish and a prayer that every dream comes true.”
3 poems from Mykyta Ryzhykh
In a world that constantly pushes us toward speed, replacement, adaptation, and whatever comes next, perhaps the most meaningful form of resistance is not to stop time. It is to commit enough time to something that it can begin to matter.
“A human painting is produced inside a life. The painter gets tired. Attention shifts. A hand hesitates. A decision made in the morning may be reconsidered at night. A mark can be the result of confidence, frustration, correction, discovery, or fatigue. Some of these conditions are visible in the final work and some are only indirectly present, but they belong to its formation. The painting has duration.”
“Maybe that is what a life is:
learning which deadlines are real,
which are merely printed,
which walls deserve a name,
which storms are not asking
to be overcome.”
This playlist celebrates the joys, sorrows, doubts, and soul-nurturing importance of the labor of creation.
“In the end, gendered insult reveals that language is one of the most durable carriers of inequality. It stores contempt in ordinary forms. It turns hierarchy into shorthand. It allows long histories of valuation to survive in single syllables and familiar phrases.”
A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.
Late summer ramblings.
