"If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer”

Julia Balthazar


Helena Perez Garcia


Ayumi Takahashi


Felicita Sala


Bjorn Lie


Loris Lora


Saar Manche


Kalina Muhova

Clare Owen

She was consoling to them.

(...) would  look for people in trouble

and offer help, even though

her body was relatively weak

Helena Perez Garcia

« We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, 

the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. 

It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't 

stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits 

of the people who are together on that ship. »

Loris Lora


Laurent Moreau


Chantal Joffe


'Afternoon Tea' -  Hu Yongkai


Hu Yongkai

 "Impossible Friendships"

porcelain cups—and the talks about philosophy

with a timid student or the postman.

A passerby with proud  eyes

whom you'll never know.

Friendship with this world, ever more perfect

(if not for the salty smell of blood).

(,,,)

And friendship with yourself

—since after all you don't know who you are.

Isabel Reyes Feeney (paiandpear)


Lisk Feng


Gosia Herba


Gosia Herba


Marianna Tomaselli

« She will thus calm her friend, and herself—and, to reach beneath

 the metaphor, rescue life from grief, clarity from chaos, without 

denying the existence of grief and chaos. She pulls her chair up to 

her desk.  "We'll see who wins this time," “ she says. Art wins . We win . «

Roman Muradov


Madalina Andronic


Grace Helmer

The budding twigs spread out their fan, 

To catch the breezy air; 

And I must think, do all I can, 

That there was pleasure there. 

Helena Perez Garcia

«Man has to believe, to know, from time to time why he  exists; 

man cannot flourish without a periodic trust in life.. »

***
 title - Gaston Bachelard
1. - excerpt from a poem by Jennifer Bartlett
2. quote - Anne Lamott
3. excerpt from a poem of Adam Zagajewski
4. from an article in new yorker magazine
5. line - William Wordsworth
6. quote - Friedrich Nietzsche

=

Mary Oliver

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

To know the change and feel it...

Claude Monet, 'La Cabane à Trouville, marée basse'


Vincent van Gogh, 'Green Wheat Fields'


'Bumblebee hives in a cottage garden'

*

the riot of spring flowers,   

he gazes forward to the city in the distance—always   

the same bountiful smile upon his portly face.   

Why don’t I share his one-minded happiness?   

*

Lucy Grossmith, 'Rose Cottage'

*

The pear blossom, the crimson-petaled magnolia,   

filling me instead with a mixture of nostalgia   

and yearning.  He’s laughing at me, isn’t he? 

*

Erin Hanson, 'Hills of Wine'


Henri-Edmond Cross, 'River in Saint-Clair'


Claude Monet


James Edward Hervey MacDonald


'Meadow'


Fidelia Bridges, 'Lily Pads and Barn Swallows'

*

The seasons wheeling despite my photographs   

and notes, my desire to make them pause.   

*

John Peter Russell, 'In the morning'

*

Is that the lesson?  That stasis, this holding on,   

is not life?  Now I’m smiling, too—the late cherry,   

its soft pink blossoms already beginning to scatter;   

the trillium, its three-petaled white flowers   

exquisitely tinged with purple as they fall.   

*

Alexi Zaitsev "Evening in Normandy"

Irisney Bosco , 'à sombra da parreira'


Claude Monet


Mamontov Mikhail Anatolyevich, 'In the Garden'


Pascal Baudot


Arthur Lismer, 'Lilac Time'


'Balade en Provence '


Pascal Baudot, 'Souvenir de Bretagne'



Camille Corot


Claude Monet, 'Evening At Argenteuil'


George Clausen, 'Souvenir of Marlow Regatta'


Charles Wysocki
*

"To know the change and feel it, When there is none to heal it, 

  Nor numbed sense to steal it, Was never said in rhyme."

*

* * *

title and last line - John Keats, from «Stanzas»

all other lines from poem «The Garden Buddha by»  Peter Pereira