I cannot do anything with a dancer--and I include myself--if the mind is not as conditioned, as limber, as obedient as the body. The body reveals what the mind is doing, where it is going, what it loves. The world reveals to you what you most want, and the conditioned mind heads toward what it most needs. Think and respond intelligently. If you entertain the notion of limitation or failure, it will rest comfortably in your company, and it will become a familiar location. I am not talking about the failure of risk: I am talking about the failure of imagination; the failure of faith. No one is looking at you; no one cares what you are doing. Get over this vain sense of observation and devote yourself to life and to others and to your work. You have no audience yet, but you have your soul and your fate, hovering overhead to see how you're going to husband both." ~ Martha Graham/Interview with James Grissom/1990

(with thanks to aliveonallchannels)

Peng Chang by Ludvig Rönn for Elle Sverige Magazine September 2023

Limanu Mbaye by Nicolo Parsenziani for Esquire Italia Magazine April 2024

The horoscope of the Persian Timurid ruler Iskandar Sultan, 1411. This is the only surviving individual illuminated horoscope from medieval Islam. Al-Mizan (Libra) is at 3 o'clock in the circle of zodiac signs.

The Path by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh

i’m obsessed with whatever these are

Cong He by Ben Toms for Hapers Bazaar Italia Magazine April 2024

“Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass. […] We’re in the world, not against it. […] The world is, no matter how we think it ought to be. You have to be with it. You have to let it be.”

— Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (via exhaled-spirals)

Kailash Temple, India

In the Artist’s Studio (detail) Gustave Léonard de Jonghe

What living in Nantes and London and Venice and New York has taught me is that my love of people is universal. I could probably be dropped just about anywhere and, assuming the language barrier wasn’t too much of an issue, turn that place into a home in a handful of weeks. People are just people, wherever they are, and what a comforting thought that is!  They’ll all have their quirks and customs and ways of doing things which may seem puzzling at first, but that’s just part of the fun. Birds build nests from whatever they can find in cities and those nests get blown away by the wind and off they go again, trying to find bits of trash and bits of treasure and building shelter again. They adapt endlessly and so do we. Somewheres supposedly build their identity around the people and places around them, but I just don’t see how you could argue that it isn’t what my people aren’t doing either. Moving around means forcing yourself to become more malleable and, in the process, realising the extent to which you are where you live, and who you talk to. The only difference is that some of us can and will gladly repeat that process over and over again, and others would rather not. How we feel about those around us does not, and should not be part of the equation. If anything, creating this cleavage means sowing division and mistrust where there should be understanding instead. It should be heartening that we are all defined by our homes - whether we were born in them or chose to adopt them shouldn’t really matter at all.

Marie Le Conte, 'In Defence of Anywheres' (5 April 2024)

Xiao Wen Ju by Hans Feurer for Vogue China July 2013

“April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Roses decorating Casa Navàs (built 1901-1908) in Reus, Camp de Tarragona, Catalonia.

Photos by amiplim on Instagram.