After he got up I asked how he was feeling. “Terrible,” he said, “hurt my wrist.” Then he ran up to the car which had pulled aside a few feet ahead on Curtner.
I was ambivalent about getting more involved because, although the driver was at fault, it was the bicyclist who ran into the car.
There is no way that a map can predict all pitfalls & problems or all pleasant surprises. A map is a metaphor that can point to but not capture the actual journey itself. A map is seen through; the journey is lived through.
Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Out here by myself in 2016 at a place almost totally inaccessible to normal people; motorcycle stuck on that hill for several hours. There’s no water! Nowadays I stay home, look at the picture.
He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money.
—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.”
Ulysses by James Joyce
GO, and eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, because it is now that God favors your works. Enjoy life with the wife you love, all the days of the vain life granted you under the sun. This is your lot in life for the toil of your labors under the sun.
Anything you can turn your hand to, do with what power you have; for there will be no work, no planning, no knowledge, no wisdom in Sheol where you are going.
Ecclesiastes 9:7-10
Here every step, forward or backward, leads into danger. Escape is out of the question.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Is it worthwhile in any individual case to look for the meaning of a dream, supposing that dreams have any meaning at all and that this meaning can be proved?
The psyche is the most baffling phenomenon with which the scientific mind has ever had to deal. Although we must assume that all psychic phenomena are somehow, in the broadest sense, causally dependent, remember that causality is no more than a statistical truth.
Heaven hovers over. It has lofty qualities, a divine atmosphere. It’s a spiritual shelter of continual security, a state above humanity’s most exalted hopes & desires. But the celestial firmament is not a place of rest. Even the angels work. They have their God-given assignments.
THE WORD (1958) by Edna Sarah Beardsley (re: heaven)
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
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