Few things in life matter as much as they feel they do. Almost nothing is perilous, while many things feel as though they are. Don’t let illusory feelings keep one from living boldly.
Or, as the Epicureans liked to say, “What is painful is easy to endure.”
The aim of introduction is to conceal a person’s identity.
George Mikes, How To Be an Alien
From the beginning our philosophers have tried to teach us how to die,
Jonathan weiner, Long for this world
and our poets have taught us that to contemplate death
is to learn to live.
Nothing is harder to see into than people’s natures.
Zhuge liang [a.k.a. Kongming], The WAy of the General
To know how to eat is to know how to live.
Auguste Escoffier
Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.
Mark twain
”Home” and “away” lost all meaning long ago, becoming a false dichotomy. “Furthest” is likely presumed to mean the most distant in space, but that is not always the greatest mental distance. Sometimes a place changes while you were away, and that shift through time becomes the most jarring distance.
I poop. Surely, I would have exploded in my youth if I hadn’t developed the habit. I feel my quality of life as a human must be better than the quality of life of gut bacteria in wall-spattered fecal matter. At least I have the leisure and capacity to contemplate such things.
Life has become immeasurably better
Hunter s. Thompson
since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.
If asked the nature of cha no yu*
Sen Sotan
Say it’s the sound of wind blow pines
In a painting.
*”Tea ceremony” in Japanese.
All rivers flow to the ocean.
Sri ramakrishna quoted by Will durant
Flow and let others flow too.
He who makes a beast of himself
Samuel johnson
gets rid of the pain of being a man.
…The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it
Hunter s. Thompson, Hell’s Angels
because the only people who really know where it is
are the ones who have gone over.
1.) love; 2.) a glorious turn of phrase; 3.) discovery; 4.) walking; 5.) swimming; 6.) stumbling upon an interesting and / or novel idea; 7.) movement; 8.) travel; 9.) street food; 10.) quiet; 11.) health; 12.) recognition that when things are at their very worst, they must get better — because everything is impermanent; 13.) an intense stretch; 14.) Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass;” 15.) undiscovered country; 16.) the hanging moment; 17.) a mystery-laden world; 18.) a moment of flow; 19.) a mountain path; 20.) a clear stream; 21.) the way of non-adversariality; 22.) a thing stripped to its simplest form; 23.) the moment breath turns the tide; 24.) animals being animals; 25.) a brief instant of free fall; 26.) the recognition that something that used to cause me angst or fear no longer does; 27.) when body, movement, and the world fall into alignment; 28.) first contact with someplace / something new; 29.) connection; 30.) the first sign that the struggle is paying off.
Do not make me bring Jeff Goldblum up in here. [No wonder they are still rebooting those movies every two years, people are not getting the message.]
List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.
1.) Nothing is permanent.
2.) The world is not what it seems.
3.) One’s subjective experience is not determined by the state of the world.
4.) Nobody grasps enough truth to be intolerant.
5.) Uncertainty is the root of all fear.
6.) Fear is the root of all hatred.
7.) Hatred is a subjective experience (See #3.) Also, uncertainty is the root of all hatred (by the transitive property,) hence the benefit of travel.
8.) Any who: a.) has suffered a string of hardships; b.) allows themselves to believe that some “other” is wholly responsible for said hardships; and c.) who lacks a sufficient sense of self-empowerment to avoid surrendering entirely to a group identity can (and likely will) become a Nazi (or the equivalent of their day.)
9.) No one can predict the future. [Regardless of how much we all love to try. (See #5.)]
10.) Entropy increases (ultimately, in a closed system.)
NOTE: I remain ready to abandon any certainty in the face of better information.
Not sure what to do with this one. It reads to me much as would, “Would you prefer air or water?”
I watch the chairs
That watch the ocean,
Wondering whether
Some passerby will take
A seat to admire
The turquoise water
& crashing surf.
No one does.
Tourist and local alike
Spill by in a rush to get
Through paradise to
Somewhere else --
Probably a cruddy
Hotel room or
Unloved job.
Of course, if someone
Did take a seat,
They might be run off
On the grounds that
These are proprietary
Chairs.
[That's just the petty world
In which we live;
Where a business will
Protect its space for
Exclusive use by
Nonexistent customers.]
One might suggest that
It's too hot to sit
And admire the ocean,
But by the time those chairs
Have cooled,
The view will be
Blackness.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 