You and I have memories
Two of Us by The Beatles, Let It Be (1970)
Longer than the road
That stretches out ahead”
385 million years from now the world will be vastly different again as well, while the universe, during the same time period, will have changed insignificantly (in comparison to its totality, of course).
The point is: you don’t have to move all that far from where you are now to experience expanded consciousness. Merely step outside. Go to the beach if possible.
THAT for six thousand years
—and no one knows how many millions of ages before
—the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings
—that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o’clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapour
—this is surely a noteworthy thing.
–Moby Dick; or, The Whale (Chap. 85: The Fountain) by Herman Melville
Truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast.
Nothing exists in itself.
If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.
But if the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich.
For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air.
Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.
Chapter 11, Nightgown – Moby Dick by Herman Melville
* Thank you Will Henry for Wallace-the-Brave
Non-stop flight from London to San Francisco shows as a curve on Mercator Projection map of the Northern Hemisphere. The trip takes 11 hours at 36,000 feet altitude in the cramped fuselage of the Boing 777 jet airliner traveling up to 590 mph.
The older you get … the higher you have to kick.”
Salman Khan
One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of existence. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of living and dying.
The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris L. West,
These two bicycled from one side of the USA to the other, just like this! Such a healthy duo!
Update 2024: I’m feeling fine. Getting energy back. Speech is still affected, but can at least communicate. Hoping focus on exercise and caloric restriction proves effective.
Update 2023: Doctor asks for me to take a look at the MRI. It is stable from before, not worse or better. The good thing is there is no contrast enhancement to suggest an ongoing active infection. Since steroids have not helped symptoms, think it is best to do another spinal tap (lumbar puncture) just to make sure there is no inflammatory process.
I check my heart now, and I find that there is still a feeling there, of something hot and struggling.
I roll my eyes back under my closed lids, and there is the sense of opening in the middle of my forehead.
The chest thing is like fighting for words and the forehead thing is pure and empty, like after all the words have been said.
There now.
Belief. I have the biology of it. All I need is the stuff to put in there. All I need are the words.
The Gathering by Anne Enright (2007)