And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.
Arthur RimbaudRead
Here I am on the shore of Brittany. Let the cities light up in the evening. My day is done. I am leaving Europe. The sea air will burn my lungs. Lost climates will tan me. I will swim, trample the grass, hung, and smoke especially. I will drink alcohol as strong as boiling metal--just as my dear ancestors did around their fires.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a deep appreciation for nature and a longing for freedom after a day's journey.
In this quote, Arthur Rimbaud expresses a sense of fulfillment and connection to his roots as he prepares to leave Europe. He embraces the elements of nature—the sea air, the sun, and the grass—highlighting a primal desire to return to simpler, more instinctive experiences reminiscent of ancestral traditions. The imagery evokes both nostalgia and a celebration of life's raw, unrefined pleasures.
In practice
This quote could be shared in a travel blog discussing the importance of connecting with nature.
And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.
My wisdom is as spurned as chaos. What is my nothingness, compared to the amazement that awaits you?
In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
The twenty minutes or more we spend inside the ring, that's the fun part. It's the rest of our lives that's the real battle - the ruthless backstage politics, the constant traveling, the endless mental and physical aches and pains.
Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up
When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don't take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn't know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don't talk about baseball at home.
I mean you're given all these lessons for the unimportant things--piano-playing, typing. You're given years and years of lessons in how to balance equations, which Lord knows you will never have to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it. Before you can drive a car you need a state-approved course of instruction, but driving a car is nothing, nothing, compared to living day in and day out with a husband and raising up a new human being.
Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.
If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.
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