A Single Layer

"The man who is contended to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee. . . . "Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."

"But I was frightened, and I tried to heal my fear with stories, stories which gave me courage, stories which affirmed that ultimately love is stronger than hate. If love is stronger than hate, then war is not all there is. I wrote, and I illustrated my stories. At bedtime my mother told me more stories. And so story helped me to learn to live. Story was in no way an evasion of life, but a way of living life creatively instead of fearfully."

"I am not, of course, as innocent as I look. I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a 'killing.' They are interested in being a writer, not in writing. They are interested in seeing their names at the top of something printed, it matters not what. And they seem to feel that this can be accomplished by learning certain things about working habits and about markets and about what subjects are currently acceptable. ". . . What interests the serious writer is not external habits but what Maritain calls, 'the habit of art'; and he explains that 'habit' in this sense means a certain quality or virtue of the mind. The scientist has the habit of science; the artist, the habit of art."

Not to continually regurgitate my Pinterest finds onto the blog here, but I have been sorting through some of my collected office space ideas, and thought I'd share my favorites. If you want to take a look at the original sources, follow the link to the board, the board to the image, and the image to the link. Sounds like a circle, but it's really a spiral. Promise.

Speaking of Snow Whites, here are some photos from the upcoming film by Tarsem.

So I was driving along in LA today, passing the Hollywood sign on the hill and offramps with names like "Melrose" and "Universal" and such, and I noticed several very interesting billboards advertising what looked like the same upcoming television series with two different titles. On the one hand, there were these flashy images with the word ONCE (and yes, I wondered for a split second if it was some television version of the cult favorite featuring musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova ). I was able to make out the small print, "upon a time," which certainly cleared up the otherwise incongruous imagery of the billboard. Then there were those nearly identical adverts with the word GRIMM. I immediately (and illegally) punched both titles into my cell phone to look up when I got home. I don't usually have much hope for any series based on fairy tales, Arthurian legends, or Robin Hood, but with these two there are very significant indicators t