“We are a link in a chain in making a contribution that goes well beyond our own life. And that’s part of what makes dying tolerable. That’s what makes being a mortal creature tolerable.”-- Atul Gawande
“My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”Stephen Hawking opens his new book with a marvelous old anecdote. A famous astronomer, after a lecture, was told by an elderly lady, who was perhaps under the influence of Hinduism, that his cosmology was all wrong. The world, she said, rests on the back of a giant tortoise. When the astronomer asked what the tortoise stands on, she replied: “You’re very clever, young man, very clever. But it’s turtles all the way down.”
—Stephen Hawking, 1981
“An Eskimo [Inuit] custom offers an angry person release by walking the emotion out of his or her system in a straight line across the landscape; the point at which the anger is conquered is marked with a stick, bearing witness to the strength or length of the rage.”
"Desire lines, also known as cow paths, pirate paths, social trails, kemonomichi (beast trails), chemins de l’âne (donkey paths), and Olifantenpad (elephant trails), can be found all over the city and all over the world, scarring pristine lawns and worming through forest undergrowth. They appear anywhere people want to walk, where no formal paths have been provided. (Sometimes they even appear despite the existence of formal paths, out of what seems to be sheer mulishness—or, perhaps, cowishness.) Some view them as evidence of pedestrians’ inability or unwillingness to do what they’re told; in the words of one academic journal, they “record collective disobedience.”Robert Moor, 'Tracing (and Erasing) New York's Lines of Desire.' The New Yorker, 2/20/2017.
Between hitchhiking lifts, [Long] stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work ...(I have a copy of this on my wall...thank you natalie!)
What do I believe in? Imagination, gardens, science, poetry, love, and a variety of nonviolent consolations. I suspect that in the aggregate all this isn't enough, but it's where I am for now.Teju Cole, from 'A Conversation with Aleksandar Hemon' in Known and Strange Things. (found via evencleveland)
"The body is not like a machine, an assembly of various parts put together to create a greater whole, and we must stop thinking of ourselves like that.- Peter Blackaby
We are organisms that evolved in complex ecosystems, with layers of interdependence. There are no units that act alone or have any sense autonomy - there are only relationships."
"It is evident that a child will learn a piece of music more quickly where there is melody, rather than an exercise in which only technique is required. Therefore beauty comes first. In the same way, yoga will be accepted by the body when it is done without resistance. The wave along the spine is like the melody in music. When the beautiful flow of extension is in action, this wave (felt along with the magical attraction of gravity) will help the body find the right adjustment in the performance of the various movements."
“Everybody has a little bit of the sun and moon in them. Everybody has a little bit of man, woman, and animal in them. Darks and lights in them. Everyone is part of a connected cosmic system. Part earth and sea, wind and fire, with some salt and dust swimming in them. We have a universe within ourselves that mimics the universe outside. None of us are just black or white, or never wrong and always right. No one. No one exists without polarities. Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them."
Anything can happen, the tallest towers
Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded.
