Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts

Feb 21, 2024

February


"Beauty is not only formal, and lies not only in the superficial qualities that are appealing to the eye or ear, it lies in patterns of meaning, in evocations of values, and its connection to the life the reader is living and the world she wants to see." Rebecca Solnit (2022). Orwell's Roses. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 2024.

Nov 25, 2023

unselfing

"Observing something beautiful" is "an occasion for unselfing" and it "may well hold the key to our collective survival. Because it means that our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives (...). It's to maximize (protect, regenerate) all life. We are here not just to make sure we as individuals survive, but to make sure that life survives. (...) We must attempt, with great urgency, to imagine a world that does not require Shadow Lands, that is not predicated on sacrificial people and sacrificial ecologies and sacrificial continents. More than imagine it, we must begin, at once, to build it." Naomi Klein (2023). Doppelganger. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Sep 8, 2023

September


"Build a life that you don't need to escape from." "If true peace and clarity are what you seek in this life (...) know that you will find them nearby and not faraway". Ryan Holiday (2019). Stillness is Key.
 
Photo: Probably the smallest garden in the city: tropical part. Taken in august 2023 by Monica Pinheiro. Free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Jul 18, 2023

July


"When you can see yourself from outside, you contemplate existence with more humility and perceptiveness than when (...) you imagined yourself as the best self, your city as the best city, and what you called life as the only conceivable life." Rafael Argullol cited by Irene Vallejo (2022). Papyrus: the invention of books in the ancient world. Photo by Monica Pinheiro, free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Jul 17, 2023

July


"It's a strange sort of pain. (...) To die of yearning for something you'll never experience." by Alessandro Baricco (1997). Silk. Painting: gouache and watercolour. June, 2023.


Oct 5, 2022

September

"Cloth can come from plants (cotton, linen), animals (sheep, silkworm), and, since the nineteenth century, from synthetic material and processes, namely plant-derived celulose liquefied and then extruded into strands (rayon) and various chemical recombinations of petroleum (nylon, spandex, polyester)." Sofi Thanhauser (2022). Worn: A People's History of Clothing. Photo by Monica Pinheiro free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Oct 4, 2022

October

"(...) it's not really about technology, but instead more about the quality of your life. (...) you'll come to realize that digital minimalism is much more than a set of rules, it's about cultivating a life worth living in our current age of alluring devices." Cal Newport (2020). Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Photo by Monica Pinheiro free to use if you respect the license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Jun 15, 2022

June

"What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself." Dreams by Nuage. Tapestry and photo by Monica Pinheiro (PT20220615). License CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Mar 12, 2022

March

 

"Turning points in a life that seemed set on a predictable path suddendly emerge. (...) a reality check sets in. Once past certainties have collapsed, one begins to look at the world with different eyes. Emotions change. (...) The cunning of uncertainty lets in the unexpected. It makes room for the new, even if the new is often made from clever and unexpected recombinations of already existing elements. Poised on the threshold between the present and the unknowable future, it invites us to join the dance." Helga Nowotony (2016). The Cunning of Uncertainty. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Feb 28, 2022

Kindness by default

As earthling, living in Portugal, I can´t imagine what Ukraine beings are going through in these hours, or what it must feel for Russian beings, having someone decide in their name to commit such an atrocity, so contrary to human species default to protect, care and blossom. Amidst another much bigger war of infinite greed, we add the greed for more territory, more resources, more terror, more power. Enough should be enough to concentrate on the habitability of the finitude of our Planet. 

Greed is a sickness. It needs help to be treated. If not treated can result in serious crimes: against environment (the biggest of all, given it sustains all life on Earth), against Nature and all living beings (including us), against our societies and the right to live peacefully and respectfully in a House that is much bigger than our homes, our communities, or our countries. 

What is happening is an aberration, an abnormality of the system, a hideous crime against us all. The system must be corrected. We are all encoded to be kind by default (*). We need to remind ourselves that what makes vibrant communities is respect, communion, sharing, and a lot of love for the extra energy to transcend ourselves (and endure in the most difficult of times). 

(*) Be alert for manipulation! We have been manipulated throughout history to believe that greed is our nature. It is not. More about it in Rutger Bregman (2021). Humankind: A Hopeful History.

Jan 15, 2022

January

"[A]ll this was an ongoing labor of love. The sustainability of nature (...) never just falls into place; it must be brought out through that human work that also brings out our humanity." Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Dec 31, 2021

Assemblages

 
«Assemblages are open-ended gatherings. They allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them. They show us potential histories in the making. (…) Assemblages don’t just gather lifeways; they make them. Thinking through assemblages urges us to ask: How do gatherings sometimes become “happenings,” that is, greater than the sum of their parts? If history without progress is indeterminate and multidimensional, might assemblages show us it’s possibilities?» Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

December

"Humans, pines, and fungi make living arrangements simultaneously for themselves and for others: multispecies worlds."  Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. 
 
20220103 note: pinus pinaster and pinus pinea descriptions in European Atlas of Forest Tree Species (2016): https://ies-ows.jrc.ec.europa.eu/efdac/download/Atlas/pdf/Pinus_pinaster.pdf; https://ies-ows.jrc.ec.europa.eu/efdac/download/Atlas/pdf/Pinus_pinea.pdf .

Dec 30, 2021

December

"Patterns of unintentional coordination develop in assemblages. To notice such patterns means watching the interplay of temporal rhythms and scales in the divergent lifeways that gather. (...) This turns out to be a method that might revitalize political economies inside them, and not just for humans. Assemblages cannot hide from capital and the state; they are sites for watching how political economy works." Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Dec 18, 2021

December

Phenology: "the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factors (such as elevation). (...) Examples include the date of emergence of leaves and flowers (...), the date of leaf colouring and fall in deciduous trees (...). In the scientific literature on ecology, the term is used more generally to indicate the time frame for any seasonal biological phenomena, including the dates of last appearance (e.g., the seasonal phenology of a species may be from April through September). (...) In addition to providing a longer historical baseline than instrumental measurements, phenological observations provide high temporal resolution of ongoing changes related to global warming." 
 
Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).
 
20220105: text was changed from book citation to definition of «phenology», maintaining the photo showing a tree, displaying all 4 seasons at time of capture (December, Cacem, Portugal), with nude parts, white flowers, green leafs, fruits and yellow and red leafs in other parts of the same tree.

Oct 6, 2021

The choice is (still) ours to make

To form a collective will, a «We», "will require the critical production and sharing of knowledge, resistance to flattening aesthetic diversity, and the invention of sustainable models that don´t threaten the viability of the whole, whether economically or ecologically, socially or institutionally" and "asserting a new biocentric imperative for living, producing, and consuming. (...) The choice is (still) ours to make." T.J. Demos (2016). Decolonizing Nature. Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology.  Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Oct 5, 2021

October

"While liberal climate propaganda argues that ecological collapse is the responsibility of human individuals, rather than extractivist corporations, libertarian climate propaganda considers the climate breakdown as a new resource for geomarketing and interplanetary colonisation. And while conspiracist climate propaganda claims climate change is nothing but a hoax to enforce population control, ecofascist climate propaganda takes it as an opportunity to double down on the question who, in ecosystem collapse, has the racial right to survive and who does not." in Maat, Jonas Staal «Climate Propagandas, Video Study» (2020). Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Sep 13, 2021

September


"(...) art holds the promise of initiating (...) creative percepcional and philosophical shifts, offering new ways of comprehending ourselves and our relation to the world differently than the destructive traditions of colonizing nature." T.J. Demos (2016). Decolonizing Nature. Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology. Image by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Jul 8, 2021

July

"O fermento havia desaparecido do pão da terra. Uma presença de graciosidade, alegria e liberdade, uma fonte de energia eléctrica desvanecera-se. Um gato erguera-se e abandonara a sala." Karen Blixen (2003). África Minha. Público: Coleção Mil Folhas. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC )

Jun 27, 2021

June

“The slowness of the craft time serves as a source of satisfaction (…). Slow craft time also enables the work of reflection and imagination – which the push for quick results cannot.” Richard Sennet, 2009. The Craftsman. Penguin Books.