M.F. Corwin

@eudaemonist.bsky.social

134 Followers 107 Following

‘I confess it as a besetting infirmity of mine that I am too much of an Eudaemonist: I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others.’ —Thos. de Quincey, ‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ https://www.eudaemonist.com

The evening sun faintly dapples a meadow surrounded by trees in springtime. The young upper leaves of the maple trees are vivid acid green.
A black and white photograph of a very old stump in a much younger forest with very little undergrowth.
A photograph of a mountain river on a fine spring morning, the sun still a promise on the horizon, with a faint mist in the distance. The water swirls in choppy white eddies over the rocks laid bare by winter storms, hemmed in by the trunks of fallen trees.
A color photograph of a toxic newt standing on some asphalt in the Pacific Northwest, staring into bleak futurity.
A photograph of books and journals, including the DSM-5, a history of English hospitals, Anatomy of Melancholy, Foucault on the clinic, a book on werewolves, and Montaigne, all very uplifting.
Brambles covered in hoarfrost, with a blurry view of a frost-covered meadow in the background, along with a hint of blue sky and some evergreens.
A view of a meadow bound by trees, covered with a thin layer of snow. A small cabin is faintly visible through the trees, its roof white with snow.
The autumn field yielding to the bounds of winter, the leaves now scattered solely on the ground, the evergreens a dark horizon.
Autumn advances across in the meadow in shades of gold and russet.
A slash a blue sky visible behind silhouetted trees, with splashes of yellow and gold and red leaves below.
Engraved frontispiece to Ulrich von Hutton’s ‘Nemo’, which is mentioned in Robert Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’.
An autumnal meadow, although most of the leaves are still green.
A photograph of two stacks of small hardcover books, showing the the cream or milky tea colored text blocks, some decked, some warped, all more or less well-thumbed. Tolstoy on the left and Florio’s Montaigne and other early modern marvels (in early twentieth-century multi-volume editions) on the right.
John Constable, study of clouds, October 1822; in his words: ‘looking S.E. noon. Wind very brisk. & effect bright & fresh. Clouds. moving very fast. With occasional very bright openings to the blue’.
Study of Cirrus Clouds, ca. 1820 by John Constable, currently held by the V&A. A painting in oils of mostly wispy clouds against a remote blue sky. The painting is surrounded by a cream colored border that is not part of the painting but rather the surface on which it was photographed.
A stack of books on a bedside table, with volumes by Kate Zambreno, Shoukei Matsumoto, Charles Lamb, Gaston Bachelard, Thomas Mann, and Zareh Vorpouni. There are some bookmarks visible that show the (limited) progress of a sleepy reader. The image is probably oversaturated and out of focus, but note the mention of a sleepy reader, which may be relevant on this point.
A black dog faces a dirt path and a misty wilderness next to mountain lake.
A photograph of an unused punched card being used as a bookmark in a copy of Tolkein's diplomatic edition of the Ancrene Wisse, with a rather dirty rug in the background.
John Constable, Cloud study with birds in flight, 1821; a low line of land above which four birds sour, small and high, against a partly cloudy sky
A stack of books including, from the bottom up: James C. Scott’s “The Art of Not Being Governed”, Anahid Nersessian’s “Calamity Form”, David Braund’s “Greek Religion and Cults in the Black Sea Region”, Tolkien’s diplomatic edition of “Ancrene Wisse”, and Marx, “Capital”, vol. 2.
Photograph of polar explorer (A)
Embrace the void!
A trillium in weak sunlight, petals already turning purple, although still edged with white. There is a background of last year’s ferns and general forest detritus.
A black dog gazes into the middle distance while wearing a grey velveteen elizabethan collar.
Two blank notebooks, rather messy, and a pen on a speckled background that is rather annoying
a snowy path through snowy woods with snow still falling down down down
A black dog stairs plaintively at the camera while lying on a fuzzy dog bed.
A black dog explores near a mountain stream, backed by the bare branches of winter.
The orange glow of sunrise and pink clouds above a mountain highway bordered by dark trees.
Yarrow flowers against a backdrop of greenery and dry earth.