Remote work has isolated people. Downtowns in the last century were characterized as industry hubs. The new lure for cities are the central social districts. Restaurants, coffee shops, and coworking spaces add robust connectivity to a city’s economy.
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
Hobbes describes life as “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Keltner believes evolution has given Homo sapiens emotions like gratitude, joy, amusement, and compassion.
On the Science of Awe by Mark Leviton Thomas
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo.
She succeeded in getting its body tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, with its legs hanging down, but generally, just as she had got its neck nicely straightened out, and was going to give the hedgehog a blow with its head, it would twist itself round and look up in her face, with such a puzzled expression that she could not help bursting out laughing.
And when she had got its head down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the hedgehog had unrolled itself, and was in the act of crawling away.
Besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow in the way wherever she wanted to send the hedgehog to.
Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll (1865)
for a clever animation -> Alice and the Flamingo
The polar bears are waiting for well-done.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go.
— Hamlet
