16th October is the feast day of St. Hedwig (1174-1243), patron saint of orphans. J.K. Rowling was inspired to name #HarryPotter’s owl Hedwig after this medieval saint. Her name comes from Scandinavian ‘Hedvig’ meaning a battle or female warrior. #FolkloreThursday #BookChatWeekly

#rachelcusktogether 'The life that you live, in order to photograph it, is already a commemoration of itself.’ - Italo Calvino Just came across this quotation and it reminded me of Outline.

I will cut adrift—I will sit on pavements and drink coffee—I will dream; I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim—this fine October. - Virginia Woolf #Womensart

#rachelcusktogether Yes yes yes! 'Sometimes it has seemed to me that life is a series of punishments for such moments of unawareness, that one forges one's own destiny by what one doesn't notice or feel compassion for; that what you don't know & don't make the effort to understand...'1/2

#rachelcusktogether I love the comparison of her failure to notice Paniotis' feeling of life as a failure with the failure of the mountain to notice 'the climber that loses his footing and falls down one of its ravines.'

#rachelcusktogether Poignant conversation with Paniotis, reflecting on the photo: 'It marked some difference between him & me, in that he was observing something while I, evidently, was entirely immersed in being it.' Two ways of living life. 'one of those moments...come to seem prophetic'

A wonderful contemplation on bookmarks.

"I can’t stand it at those Los Angeles parties when people cover up the real grass with plastic because they think it’s going to wear out by being trodden on. Well, a lot of things get worn out by being trodden on,or even just stepped on-especially people-so why choose grass to protect?"D Keaton 1/2

#rachelcusktogether 'I suppose...it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see...' I love the story about the two children's relationship and what she extrapolates from it, the importance of a shared vision.

#rachelcusktogether I've got ahead of the schedule, having started behind, but the timing works out for me. The graveyard anecdote reminds me of when I got locked in a cemetery as a freshman, after dusk, called to passersby for help. They ran away, thinking I was a ghost.Firemen came at last... 1/2

#rachelcusktogether 'And of those two ways of living - living in the moment and living outside it - which was the more real?' Now there's the/a question. What does 'real' mean?

#rachelcusktogether 'I was beginning to see my own fears and desires manifested outside myself, was beginning to see in other people's lives a commentary on my own'. Very recognisable. Perhaps something that happens at a time of crisis when the psyche opens up to this dissonance and discomfort.

'a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest. It was an impulse I knew well, & I had learned that it was not the summons from a larger world I used to believe it to be. It was simply a desire to escape from what I had.' #rachelcusktogether

#Rachelcusktogether 'He didn't once glance back at me, for people are at their least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.' Her piercing awareness. Also great how she turns herself into his next anecdote, narrated by whom?

#Rachelcusktogether 'But what other people thought was no longer of any help to me. Those thoughts only existed within certain structures, and I had definitively left those structures.' She is way out at sea. Now I'm pondering the choice of 'definitively' over 'definitely', and the difference.

#Rachelcusktogether 'It struck me that some people might think I was stupid, to go out alone on a boat with a man I didn't know.' I've been wondering this for a few minutes. And also struck by how few questions he asks her in his unending saga of himself. Very male (though not true of all men).

#rachelcusktogether 'I could never establish to what degree it [Silicon Valley] was conceptual, and to what degree an actual place'. I'm starting to feel that way about Outline - how much is conceptual, hte flow in her mind, and how much of it is actual.

#rachelcusktogether When she remeets her neighbour from the plane flight - 'The material reality of my neighbour, which up there had seemed so light, was concretised down here, and the result was that he seemed more of a stranger, as though context were also a kind of imprisonment.'see my comment...

Here's the final part of the story of Moshe Feldenkrais, Selvarajan Yesudian & Yoga. If you're interested, please read my piece. Still trying to find out more about these connections, and would appreciate any input. wellhousecircle.substack.com/publish/post...

Gosia Janik

I could not agree more.

In celebration of World Octopus Day, we wanted to revisit one of our favorite cephalopod sightings, the glass octopus — Vitreledonella richardi filmed during a month-long #PhoenixIslandsCoral expedition in 2021.

This delightful new book by Cara Giaimo and Artist Vlad Stankovic includes a few familiar animals. Do you recognize any of these advice-givers from our ROV dives and videos? orionmagazine.org/article/dear...

I, however, Have such meagre power, Clutching at a Moment, While you control An hour. But your hour is A stone. My moment is A flower. -Langston Hughes, "Poet to Bigot" #everynightapoem As ever.

#rachelcusktogether Wonderful parable of the child who drops what they value, suffers, and when it's returned drops it again. 'The memory of suffering...compelled them to repeat it, for the suffering was the magic that cause the object to come back...' Getting trapped in the pain-pleasure cycle.

#Rachelcusktogether The story of her son who leaves the place if you aren't there when he arrives and becomes lost, saying he couldn't find you. 'But the only hope of finding anything is to stay exactly where you are, at the agreed place. It's just a question of how long you can hold out.'

#Rachelcusktogether 'He began to ask me questions, as though he had learned to remind himself to do so, and I wondered what or who had taught him that lesson, which many people never learn.' So true.

#rachelcusktogether Just started Outline. I feel connected with the author's voice & how she perceives. Life's little experiences are the matter for insight - the eccentricity of her neighbour's bushy eyebrows 'made me answer him.The unexpected sometimes looks like a prompting of fate.'

'I am committed to never retiring from being myself.' I was uplifted to hear this comment in a meeting today.

"I feel no sense of caution or restraint, nor do I have any doubts, finally. Something has come full circle. I commit the same errors as in the past but they are no longer errors. There is only beauty, passion, desire." -Annie Ernaux, "Getting Lost" (tr. A. Strayer)

Tabuchi Toshio (b.1941) : Moonlight On a Country Road in Autumn' a contemporary Nihonga (日本画, traditional Japanese-style) painter from Tokyo (東京).

It's a dream I always have.

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

It was only yesterday I was telling someone that I was lost for words when I once asked a young girl what most lifted her spirits, she looked competely baffled and finally said 'going shopping'. Still, I agree that for me too this may be the most emotional thing I've read about going shopping.

Written 55 years ago, Schulz's heartfelt clarity cuts through the noise, even today. h/t @tisserand.bsky.social

The wind got up in the night and took our plans away -John Berger, "Ten Dispatches About Endurance in Face of Walls” #everynightapoem #ofsorts

Jane Goodall - 'I went to the conference as a scientist and I left as an activist.' fb.watch/CvyQLZStvS/

So sad to hear of the passing of Jonathan Lear.

I house sat Jonathan Lear's Cambridge home many decades ago - nice to be reminded of him and with this wonderful definition of hope!

Donkeys at my local animal sanctuary having a party to celebrate one of them living there for 20 years.

I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent deliberate silence.’ —Louise Gluck

Dear friends, As have become a habit, I mark each #autumnequinox by sharing a small poem by Xin Qiji. I also start my translation cycle of Chinese and Japanese poems and prose that mark the twenty-four lunisolar micro-seasons. Translation notes blogged here: #everynightapoem

#ANote_2025 The hollyhocks - 'she fancied that their round heads were notes of music...chords and scales...'

#ANote_2025 Part V Grace goes on holiday somewhere, where she hears 'warning notes of a new order', rattles & roars not yet disturbing the 'one common harmony of the fruitful earth'. A beautiful passage where Grace saves the baby bird, sheltering it in her hand as she shelters Hugh in her mind.

I've written a piece about the connections of yoga & Feldenkrais - if you're interested please read & consider subscribing to my Substack. This topic is very much open for exploration. I'd love to hear your thoughts. wellhousecircle.substack.com/p/moshe-feld...

#ANote_2025 'caught in a general tangle of surprises' - the garden, the people in it, their thoughts & feelings. Grace admires the Hugh she sees, 'clear & unambiguous, & not as most people were'. Class comes back, & an implicit comparison between Grace & Pansy, both lower classes than Hugh.

#ANote_2025 I find Pansy the most sympathetic character in this tale of middle classness.

#ANote_2025 The dancing place has 'a kind of hypocrtiical decorum, a furtiveness suggesting the repressed and dismal lasciviousness of British non-conformist imaginations.'