Kurt Seligmann, Theatrical Scene, 1958

"For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!" ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Kurt Seligmann, Sabbath Phantoms (Mythomania), 1945

Tadeusz Styka, Leda, 1940

Gerardo Chávez, Behind His Double, 1973

Tracey Emin, People Like You Need To Fuck People Like Me, 2007

Tracey Emin, I Wanted You To Fuck Me So Much I Couldn't Paint Anymore, 2020

Sleigh Bells, Infinity Guitars

Journey into the Interior by Theodore Roethke

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood 
    roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.

My Religion by Santōka Taneda

My Three Precepts:
Do not waste anything.
Do not get angry.
Do not complain.

My Three Vows:
Do not attempt the impossible.
Do not feel regret for the past.
Do not berate oneself.

My Three Joys:
Study.
Contemplation.
Haiku.

heart by Santōka Taneda

my heart is weary —
the mountains, the sea
are too beautiful

mountains by Santōka Taneda

"Westerners like to conquer mountains;
Orientals like to contemplate them.
As for me, I like to taste the mountains."

Tamara de Lempicka, Autoportrait (Tamara in a Green Bugatti), 1928

William DeVaughn, Be Thankful For What You've Got

Spoon , The Ghost of you Lingers

Evelyn De Morgan, The light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not, 1895

“We Must Cultivate Our Garden”