Veronika Fuchs
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veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Veronika Fuchs
@veronikafuchs.bsky.social
200 followers 160 following 390 posts
Writer. Mama. Dreamer. Occasional painter.
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veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Morning read 👀 (first time reading it)
Cover of Bram Stoker's Dracula. On a gray background, blooming burgundy flowers (some of them bleeding), black buds, and two bats.
November 17, 2025 at 3:24 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Adding some color to gloomy November
Watercolor painting of fireweed with green grass
November 16, 2025 at 5:08 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
After night vigils with Rilke
Book cover. Reads as: Julia Kristeva BLACK SUN DEPRESSION AND MELANCHOLIA Translated by Leon S. Roudiez COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
November 12, 2025 at 4:32 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
And yet even that is possible: to have the starred skies closely wrapped around one's heart.

Rilke, in a letter to Ilse Erdmann, October 1915
Text: I remember Rodin's exasperation when Francis Jammes repeated Van Tieghem's claim that the seeds of certain flowers had arrived on earth from other stars, trapped inside meteorites. Rodin knew how much we have yet to accomplish here (indeed, what not?!) and very decidedly did not want our curiosity turned beyond and away from what is here. And yet even that is possible: to have the starred skies closely wrapped around one's heart.
November 9, 2025 at 6:23 AM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
She was watching
Picture of a full moon with a halo of light around it. Looks like a pupil with an iris. Silhouettes of trees against a blurred background.
November 6, 2025 at 4:38 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
November, and I'm leafing through Mary Frances's @maryfrancesness.bsky.social LANDFALL again...

www.metambesen.org/wp-content/u...
November 3, 2025 at 6:05 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Stories (and histories) on the surface of Virginia Woolf's writing desk, photographed by Annie Leibovitz, 2010
The wooden surface of the desk, stained with ink and paint, and other marks of use and time
November 3, 2025 at 4:36 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Fall
Watercolor painting: autumn trees with yellow, orange, brown, and a few green leaves against a blue sky, seen as if from below
October 31, 2025 at 4:24 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Speaking of Rilke, autumns, and paintings (and of Rilke's angels and our desperate moments under black suns), years ago I painted "Rilke's Autumn" and destroyed it shortly afterward.
Abstract painting: mostly vertical brushstrokes in shades of dark green, brown, and black. In the center, "something" resembling burning angel wings, casting light around them
October 26, 2025 at 6:06 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
An autumn day spent with paintings. It is no surprise that Rilke's words arrived with the night.

"At no other time ...does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; …Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost,"

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Cézanne
Text: Never have I been so touched and almost gripped by the sight of heather as the other day, when I found these three branches in your dear letter. Since then they are lying in my Book of Images, penetrating it with their strong and serious smell, which is really just the fragrance of autumn earth. But how glorious it is, this fragrance. At no other time, it seems to me, does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more than honeysweet where you feel it is close to touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost, and yet again wind; tar and turpentine and Ceylon tea. Serious and poor like the smell of a begging monk and yet again hearty and resinous like precious incense. And the way ...
October 26, 2025 at 6:51 AM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
You might also like the yellow in that Bonnard painting I was looking for, "The Sea Trip" ("The Hahnloser Family"). There's a lot of blue here, and they look wonderful together.
October 25, 2025 at 5:30 PM
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Another one by Vuilllard, with an excerpt from Jorie Graham's poem "Before", inspired by the painting.

www.nga.gov/stories/arti...
Édouard Vuillard Repast in a Garden, 1898 Oil on cardboard Visual description by National Gallery of Art: Two people, perhaps a woman and man, and a baby sit at a table in a courtyard surrounded by vine-covered walls in this square painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible dabs, dashes, or smudges. The table is to the left of center. The man sits on the far side, to our left, and the woman, who appears to have her brown hair pulled up, sits facing away from us wearing a smoke-gray garment. A child wearing pink and pale blue sits to our right of the woman and seems to raise both arms. The ground is dotted with cream white and fog gray against the brown board on which this was painted. Steps lead up to a building at the back of the courtyard to the left, and the vine-covered wall stretches across the right two-thirds of the background. The artist signed the lower left corner, “E Vuilllard.” and the afternoon went on forever, and the path to the walled garden went on forever, the repast the Sunday the sunlight burning this leaf then that one,  the wine on the table, burning, the bread, the thudding of the minutes inaudible, of what’s in the minutes,  that greed
October 25, 2025 at 5:27 PM
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More yellows and greens from Édouard Vuillard
Édouard Vuillard Under the Portico, 1899-1900 Oil on board Édouard Vuillard The Petunia (Le Pétunia), 1889-1890 Oil on board Édouard Vuillard La conversation, chez les Natanson à Valvins, 1896 Édouard Vuillard Les Ailes au Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, 1894
October 25, 2025 at 3:35 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
I was looking for Bonnard's painting mentioned in Marguerite Duras's "Practicalities" ("Bonnard") and, of course, the path led me further, to Édouard Vuillard, whose yellows and greens I adore today.
Édouard Vuillard The Flowered Dress (La robe à ramages), 1891 Oil on canvas Édouard Vuillard Guelder Roses and the Venus of Milo (Rose guelder e la Venere di Milo), 1905 Oil on cardboard Édouard Vuillard Madame Hessel At The Milliner (Madame Hessel Chez La Modiste), 1903 Oil on board Édouard Vuillard Man and Woman beneath a Tree (Homme et femme sous un arbre), 1893 Oil on board
October 25, 2025 at 3:35 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Robert Schumann by Mary Oliver 🖤
Text: Robert Schumann Hardly a day passes I don't think of him in the asylum: younger than I am now, trudging the long road down through madness toward death. Everywhere in this world his music explodes out of itself, as he could not.  And now I understand something so frightening, and wonderful — how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar. So!  Hardly a day passes I don't think of him: nineteen, say, and it is spring in Germany and he has just met a girl named Clara.  He turns the corner, he scrapes the dirt from his soles, he runs up the dark staircase, humming.
October 21, 2025 at 6:14 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
My sister is visiting for the first time in three years. Of course, we went to the orchard to pick apples. She asked, "Does it feel like homeplace yet?" All night long, I dreamed about jars of grandmother's apple jam.
An apple orchard with apples on the trees and on the ground A hand holding an apple hanging from a tree
October 20, 2025 at 5:39 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Today's poem (Daily Poem) from The Paris Review. ❤️
Text: Linda Gregg Part of Me Wanting Everything to Live This New England kind of love reminds me of the potted chrysanthemum my husband gave me. I cared for it faithfully, turning the pot a quarter turn each day as it sat by the window until the blossoms hung with broken necks on the dry stems. Cut off the dead parts and watched green leaves begin, new buds open. Thinking the chrysanthemum would not die unless I forced it to. The new flowers were smaller and smaller, resembling little eyes awake and alone in the dark. I was offended by the lessening, by the cheap renewal. By a going on that gradually left the important behind. But now it’s different. I want the large and near, and endings more final. If it must be winter, let it be absolutely winter.
October 17, 2025 at 5:01 PM
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Heart-shaped yarrow
October 17, 2025 at 4:49 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Louise Glück, I love you
🤍
Text: Under Taurus We were on the pier, you desiring that I see the Pleiades. I could see everything but what you wished. Now I will follow. There is not a single cloud; the stars appear, even the invisible sister. Show me where to look, as though they will stay where they are. Instruct me in the dark.
October 14, 2025 at 2:42 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
My son and I collect autumn leaves during our walks, with no other purpose than to adore them. With so much happening... this helps.
Collection of leaves in various autumn colors and shapes on a wooden table
October 8, 2025 at 3:51 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
Roses for Susan @susanlleary.bsky.social, I hope you are doing well, Susan—this is probably the last bloom of the year, and therefore the most precious.
October 1, 2025 at 4:14 PM
veronikafuchs.bsky.social
October

Favorite parts from Louise Glück's poem October.
Text: 4 The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now. And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed.  This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared. The songs have changed; the unspeakable has entered them. This is the light of autumn, not the light that says I am reborn. Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered. This is the present, an allegory of waste. So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate: the ideal burns in you like a fever. Or not like a fever, like a second heart. The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful. They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind. They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish. And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly in anticipation of silence. The ear gets used to them. The eye gets used to disappearances. You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared. A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity. How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. Maestoso, doloroso: This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something. Text: 6 The brightness of the day becomes the brightness of the night; the fire becomes the mirror. My friend the earth is bitter; I think sunlight has failed her. Bitter or weary, it is hard to say. Between herself and the sun, something has ended. She wants, now, to be left alone; I think we must give up turning to her for affirmation. Above the fields, above the roofs of the village houses, the brilliance that made all life possible becomes the cold stars. Lie still and watch: they give nothing but ask nothing. From within the earth’s bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness my friend the moon rises: she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?
October 1, 2025 at 3:37 PM
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A painting that reminded me of this poem by Annie Nazzaro in @stonecirclereview.bsky.social, "After The Poet's Garden by Vincent van Gogh, 1888"
Text: After The Poet’s Garden by Vincent van Gogh, 1888 by Annie Nazzaro A summer night on the verge of seizure. The only story I know how to tell right now. The light shining strange and yellow on leaves that haven’t ever been this green. The same things that’ve always happened here. The wanting and the leaving, the grass bending in their wake. How a tree looks just before it topples, thrashing ahead of a crack. A paralyzing quiet, an unbearable heat. What I’ve been waiting for and what I would do anything to stop if there was anything that would stop it. The horizon line, obscured by foliage. Until the wind takes everything it’s going to take.
September 26, 2025 at 7:47 PM
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Autumn: back to mists and watercolors
Watercolor painting: a misty autumn forest reflected in a pond at dawn
September 26, 2025 at 3:25 PM
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the sadness of ... the stroke of midnight, ... words with too many meanings, ... insomnia, ... and icebergs seen from a canoe.
Text: Purple by Mary Ruefle Purple sadness is the sadness of classical music and eggplant, the stroke of midnight, human organs, ports cut off for part of every year, words with too many meanings, incense, insomnia, and the crescent moon. It is the sadness of play money, and icebergs seen from a canoe. It is possible to dance to purple sadness, though slowly, as slowly as it takes to dig a pit to hold a sleeping giant. Purple sadness is pervasive, and goes deeper into the interior than the world's greatest nickel deposits, or any other sadness on earth. It is the sadness of depositories, and heels echoing down a long corridor, it is the sound of your mother closing the door at night, leaving you alone.
September 22, 2025 at 7:11 AM