a bit of ruskin

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. 

This observation by British critic, author, poet and artist John Ruskin seems rather positive and pithy, but he obviously never lived in Chicago, particularly during this past "zero is warm" Polar Vortex winter.  Or in various other extreme arctic/desert climes. Weather forecasting aside, as a creative and critical being, Ruskin was diverse and prolific.  From Modern Painters to the autobiographical Praeterita, he clearly was a man who let little thought or time go to waste.  And then there was that whole nasty spat with Whistler.

Ruskin's life -- particularly the eventual love triangle of his ambiguous marriage  -- continues to inspire other artistic efforts, including two films made almost 100 years apart (1912's The Love of John Ruskin and 2013's Effie).  Love him or hate him, he's kept some people thinking since he first formed a cohesive opinion, which probably involved critiquing the arrangement of wooden alphabet blocks in his nursery.

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do. -- John Ruskin

(Pictured:  Little Ruskin by John Nortcote, 1822; Ruskin by John Everett Millais, circa 1853; Self-Portrait from 1875; Ruskin by W.G. Collingwood, 1897)

unconsciously brilliant

"The unconscious should not be thought of as a limbo where vague, cloudy, and amorphous notions swim hastily about. There is every reason to believe, on the contrary, that it is the great home of form; that it is quicker to see types, patterns, purposes, than our intellect can ever be...[I]f you are to write well, you must come to terms with the enormous and powerful part of your nature which lies behind the threshold of immediate knowledge."

Words: Becoming a Writer -- Dorothea Brande, 1934
Image: Dream Vision -- Albrecht Dürer, 1525 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)