414. How the universe comes to know itself.

2009-10-09T19:07:38Z

'Not only are we traveling through the universe, but the universe is traveling through us. It needs to feel us, what we are feeling, our marvels and infatuations and heartaches;... to know what that stuff is, how it came to be and find its instrument, the source of its music; to experience itself in us or through us. But most of all, and forever, the mystery and the wonder.... To record and memorialize that, why we are here at all.

From the first droplet of anything against the first bare surface, we were essential to something vast, rough, ahead of and behind us. Our present struggles and planet-wide dangers are no accident; they are an actual contour of creation.

We are charged with a huge responsibility to bring it home. And this is not just some insoluble crisis or a daunting array of dire contingencies. Nor is it a game for phony spiritual saviors and self-appointed gurus to grandstand, for soldiers to march to victory, on any world accompanying any star.

We have chosen this - that cannot be said enough. We are trying to rescue the "real," and we are neither its victims nor its paragons.

Yet, it is okay to be this happy, this afraid, this alone, this once. It is more than okay; it is an obligation. For it will all turn into something else, in fact can only, can only become, in exile in these amazing shapes, what they are.'

- Richard Grossinger, The Bardo of Waking Life

'Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.'

- Terrence McKenna

'There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers what exactly the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened.'

- Douglas Adams

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

413. Mysterium Tremens et Fascinas (A tremendous and fascinating mystery)

2009-09-24T15:45:47Z

SuperNatural

'We live in all we seek. The hidden shows up in too-plain sight. It lives captive on the face of the obvious - the people, events, and things of the day - to which we as sophisticated children, have long since become oblivious. What a hideout: Holiness lies spread and borne over the surface of time and stuff like color.'

- Annie Dillard

'The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true science. He who knows it not, and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. We all had this priceless talent when we were young. But as time goes by, many of us lose it. The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement. It is the essence of his being.'

- Hans Selye

'Even with the understandable goal of avoiding unnecessary surprises, if you pattern your life too carefully, slowly you lose your sense of awe. I am not speaking here of the supernatural; I am speaking of the super in the natural.'

- Forrest Church

'All things cover up the same mystery; all things are veils that cover God.'

- Pascal

All of the above from Forrest Church's Lifecraft, The Art of Meaning In the Everyday

'What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get into the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.'

- Haruki Murakami via WhiskeyRiver

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

412. 'Our world is enchanted, riddled with meanings, itself sacred ground.'

2009-09-10T16:34:41Z

Heaven

'The mystery of life becomes ever deeper and more wondrous, the gift of life more precious and unaccountable. Remaining open to the unknown, we enter further into it. We grow in knowledge, yes, and in ignorance, but also in wonder and, finally, in trust.'

- Forrest Church

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

411. You don't want to know.

2009-09-06T00:37:01Z

Tourist

'It may be when we no longer know what to do,

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go,

we have begun our real journey.'

- Wendell Berry

'Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what is next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.'

- Agnes de Mille

'I'm a modern girl

but I fold in half so easily,

when I put myself

in the picture of success.

I could learn a trade,

or try to map the ocean...'

- Rilo Kiley

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

410. The Point

2009-08-27T16:52:08Z

Blue

'I'm just gonna go for broke on this one and say that we do it because life is so ridiculously gorgeous, strange, heartbreaking, horrific, etc., that we are compelled to describe it to ourselves, but we can't! We cannot do it! And so we make art.'

- Miranda July

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

409. 'We have to start fishing...'

2009-08-20T04:21:52Z

LIT-UP

'One reason for fascination with Miyazaki may be his contradictions. The director whose films typically end with an uplifting affirmation of humanity suitable for children is the same director who told his Berkeley audience, "It would be wonderful if I could see the end of civilization during my lifetime." The man who is able to entrance children, and adults, with his animation is the same one who complains about children spending too much time with virtual reality instead of being outdoors in nature.

UC Berkeley honored Miyazaki with the Japan Prize, first given last year to writer Haruki Murakami, for contributions to the understanding of Japan. Miuazaki provided further fodder for academics in his brief acceptance remarks, which consisted of an extended metaphor about those in the entertainment field needing to insert a pipe down through the sheets of paper full of data and figures that fill our daily lives. "We have to start fishing from way down below where there is no paper," he said through an interpreter. "And the only way that we can really justify our presence and our work is to continue to make this effort to make this hole and go deeper and deeper."'

- from the LA Times article on Miyazaki, 08-09-09

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

408. 'This exchange of gifts - mysterious - settled deep inside me...'

2009-08-06T05:46:13Z

Diamond-Lil

'Playing in the lot behind the house one day when he was still a little boy, Neruda discovered a hole in a fence board. "I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, uncared for, and wild. I moved back a few steps, because I sensed vaguely that something was about to happen. All of a sudden a hand appeared - a tiny hand of a boy about my own age. By the time I came close again, the hand was gone, and it its place there was a marvellous white toy sheep.

"The sheep's wool was faded. Its wheels had escaped. All of this only made it more authentic. I had never seen such a wonderful sheep. I looked back through the hole but the boy had disappeared. I went into the house and brought out a treasure of my own; a pine cone, opened, full of odor and resin, which I adored. I set it down in the same spot and went off with the sheep.

"I never saw either the hand or the boy again. And I have never seen a sheep like that either. The toy I lost finally in a fire. But even now...whenever I pass a toyshop, I look furtively into the window. It's no use. They don't make sheep like that anymore."

Neruda has commented on this incident several times. "This exchange of gifts - mysterious - settled deep inside me like a sedimentary deposit," he once remarked in an interview. And he associates the exchange with his poetry. "I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvellous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses - that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

"That exchange brought home to me for the first time a precious idea: that all humanity is somehow together... It won't surprise you then that I have attempted to give something resiny, earthlike, and fragrant in exchange for human brotherhood...

"This is the great lesson I learned in my childhood, in the backyard of a lonely house. Maybe it was nothing but a game two boys played who didn't know each other and wanted to pass to the other some good things of life. Yet maybe this small and mysterious exchange of gifts remained inside me also deep and indestructible, giving my poetry light."'

- Story about Pablo Neruda via the final passage of Lewis Hyde's The Gift.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

407. 'Somehow keep it open...'

2009-07-30T01:35:08Z

Love

'The important thing about despair is never to give up, never wrap up and put away a sterile life, but somehow keep it open. Because you never can know what's coming; never. That's the great thing about life, the crucial thing to remember. You may beat your fists on a stone wall for years and years, and every consideration of common sense will say it's hopeless, forget it, spare yourself; and then one day your bleeding hand will go through as if the wall were theatrical gauze; you'll be in another realm where birds are singing and love is possible, and you'd have missed it if you'd given up, because it might be only that one day the wall was not stone.'

- Allen Wheelis, via Whiskey River - http://whiskeyriver.blogspot.com

'I love those who yearn for the impossible.'

- Johann Wolfgang von Geothe

'For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.'

- Lewis Carroll

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

406. The truth is changing every minute.

2009-07-23T02:26:38Z

Shipshape

'So you tell yourself

I have nowhere to go

I don't know what to do

And I don't even know the time of day

I guess it doesn't matter any way

Life is so strange

Destination unknown

When you don't know

Your destination

Something could change

It's unknown

And then you won't know

Destination unknown

You ask yourself

When will my time come

Has it all been said and done

I know I'll leave when it's my time to go

'Til then I'll carry on with what I know...'

- From the Missing Persons song > Destination Unknown

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

405. '32 flavors and then some...' - Ani Difranco

2009-07-15T17:58:23Z

Flavor

'To know someone is to sense that person's flavor - what you feel from that person. Each one has his or her own flavor, a particular personality from which many feelings appear. To fully appreciate this personality or flavor is to have a good relationship; to fully appreciate them.'

- Shunryu Suzuki via Whiskey River

'The number of flavors is infinite, for every soluble body has a peculiar flavor, like none other.'

- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

'I'm the flavor of the month.'

- George Clooney

Read and post comments | Send to a friend