paper magazine

Anaïs Nin, from diary entry featured in A Journal of Love; The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin

Venus- May 17 2016 By Kevin M Gill

bell hooks

Jay Wright, “This Morning”

Ivar Arosenius - Waterlilies (1902)

— Magda Szabó, from “The Door,” published c. November 1987

Practicing self-respect and living with purpose has given me deep roots that welcomed so much growth and happiness in my life. I love that I get to do whatever I want whether or not people around me do the same or not. I also love that I don’t feel the pressure of doing certain things just because others around me do it. That I can take a step back and reconsider my options everytime. I find my quirks quite delightful and I indulge in bringing to the surface as much of myself as possible. I love being quietly myself without the need to fight for validation. I feel immense joy in everything I do.

To Be Alive

by Gregory Orr

To be alive: not just the carcass But the spark. That's crudely put, but… If we're not supposed to dance, Why all this music?

In the autumn of 1883, a paper in the nation's capital reported that "an Iowa woman has spent 7 years embroidering the solar system on a quilt" — to teach astronomy in an era when women could not attend college. Her story.

Her name is Ellen Harding Baker, and she taught science in rural Iowa during an era when most institutions of higher education were still closed to women (while also raising five children).

She used her Solar System quilt to illustrate her astronomy lectures. To ensure the accuracy of her embroidered depiction, Baker traveled to the Chicago Observatory to view sunspots and the Great Comet of 1882.

i thank you God for this most amazing

by E.E. Cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any -- lifted from the no of all nothing -- human merely being doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)