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Sylvia Sydney and Gary Cooper. This is from the film City Streets (1930).

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"I just try to walk my own path," he said. "You have to believe in yourself, and you have to ride out the seasons. Everybody wants it to be summer all the time, in relationships, and with their career. And when the weather starts to turn, they think they better get out. So, it takes a certain amount of persistence."

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Noah Steenbruggen by Yorick Nubé

part 6

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Frida Kahlo

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Claudette Colbert, 1934

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Cecília Meireles, from a poem titled "Silk and Ashes," featured in Antologia poética

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Anais Pouliot by Alina Lebedeva

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The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.

—Simone de Beauvoir

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I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense that once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

—James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

Photo by Richard Avedon

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Gian Lorenzo Bernini. His rendition of Apollo and Daphne (1622–24) was intended to be viewed from one spot as if it were a relief. She is mid-transition into a tree to escape him, and you can actually see through the marble leaf petals; they are so delicate. In the Galleria Borghese, Rome.

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The tragedy-sniffers are all

about

they get up in the morning

and begin to find things

wrong

and they fling themselves

into a rage about

it,

a rage that lasts until

bedtime,

where even there

they twist in their

insomnia,

not able to rid their

mind

of the petty obstacles

they have

encountered.

They feel set against,

it’s a plot.

And by being constantly

angry they feel that

they are constantly

right.

You see them in traffic

honking wildly

at the slightest

infraction,

cursing,

spewing their

invectives.

You feel them

in lines

at banks

at supermarkets

at movies,

they are pressing

at your back

walking on your

heels,

they are impatient to

a fury.

They are everywhere

and into

everything,

these violently

unhappy

souls.

Actually they are

frightened,

never wanting to be

wrong

they lash out

incessantly

it is a malady

an illness of

that

breed.

The first one

I saw like that

was my

father

and since then

I have seen a

thousand

fathers,

ten thousand

fathers

wasting their lives

in hatred,

tossing their lives

into the

cesspool

and

ranting

on.

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The daughter of a wealthy Spanish Republican, Maria Casarès was an extraordinary woman, fully capable as one commentator has written of playing Don Juana to Camus's Don Juan, though often resentful of the fact that he refused to leave his wife and children for her. Casarès discussed her often stormy sixteen-year relationship with Camus in her 1980 autobiography Résidente privilégiée.

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Once we know and are aware, we are responsible for our action and inaction. We can do something about it or ignore it. Either way, we are still responsible.

—Jean-Paul Sartre and his cat Néant (Nothing)