31 January

Born in 1900 – Betty Parsons, American artist.

Above: Bright Day, 1966

Also, born in 1915, American monk and writer Thomas Merton.

That which is oldest is most young and most new. There is nothing so ancient and so dead as human novelty. The ‘latest’ is always stillborn. It never even manages to arrive. What is really new is what was there all the time. I say, not what has repeated itself all the time; the really ‘new’ is that which, at every moment, springs freshly into new existence. This newness never repeats itself. Yet it is so old it goes back to the earliest beginning. It is the very beginning itself, which speaks to us.

-from New Seeds of Contemplation, 1961