Life is an experiment: we’re all testing hypotheses, learning from outcomes, and iterating as we go. Every choice is a variable, every experience a data point.
–Grok
The world of the materialist is a “bubble world”. Its inhabitants live inside a consumer-driven, status-obsessed bubble. Possession is key. Those who can see beyond the walls of the bubble are deemed mad & deluded. A gimpse of the truth will burst the fragile walls.
–The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. What do you see?–Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.
But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster–tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive.
Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice.
No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.
And there they stand–miles of them–leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues–north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The shadow of an eagle that had set forth from those high and craggy fastnesses crossed the line of riders below and they looked up to mark it where it rode in that brittle blue and faultless void.
Blood Meridian (1985) by Cormac McCarthy
Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup and looking up I noticed I was late. Found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat. Found my way upstairs and had a smoke, and somebody spoke and I went into a dream.
A Day in the Life by The Beatles
Heaven & earth do not unite… Thus the superior man falls back upon his inner worth in order to escape the difficulties.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all, cling onto your back, and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it devour your remains – for all things will kill you, both slowly & fastly – but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
Kinky Friedman
Ride we had planned to take last year.
My biking buddy and I were stretching the concept of aging. We were trusting our instincts to keep us out of cars’ way, and pushing forward in terms of distance, testing our survival chances one way & another.
“To a biker the sensation is real and pure and akin to something spiritual: you seek, and on the road you find.”
Caroline Knapp
Walk a fine line between flexibility & consistency. A strategist must have faith in his strategy and the courage to follow it through and still be open-minded enough to realize when a change of course is required.
Garry Kasparov