Paul Klee at his home in Bern, Switzerland, 1939.

Illustration by Noriyoshi Ohrai

She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.

- James Ellroy, My Dark Places

Unnoscriptd from the Permutations on the Picturesque series, John Pfahl, 1993-96

Nagi Sakai

November Night, Edward Przybyłowicz

On Valentine's Day of 1884, just 36 hours after the birth of their only daughter, Alice, 25-year-old future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt held his young wife in his arms as she passed away from undiagnosed Bright's disease. Incredibly, just hours before, in the same house, he had already said a final goodbye to his mother, Martha. She had succumbed to Typhoid, aged just 48.

Theodore's diary for that day read as follows.

25-11-1970 

Stations, Bill Viola, 1994

Naoko Ito

“I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet