Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds

"Humans consider themselves unique, so they’ve rooted their whole theory of existence on their uniqueness. 'One' is their unit of measure — but it's not. All social systems we’ve put into place are a mere sketch; 'one plus one equals two,' that’s all we’ve learned. But one plus one has never equaled two — there are, in fact, no numbers and no letters. We’ve codified our existence to bring it down to human size, to make it comprehensible; we’ve created a scale so we can forget its unfathomable scale… Time is the only true unit of measure. It gives proof to the existence of matter; without time, we do not exist."

I Never Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. - Mark Twain (1924)

The Rightness of Trust

Life is about trust.
Trust isn't always rewarded, but on the other hand, if you make decisions based on trust, they always seem to have a sort of rightness to them.

- Johnny Worricker

Papa Was a Rolling Stone

It's an important question you ask - But one, I think, with a simple answer. We have this need, you and I, from the time we are little, to peek over your neighbor's fence. And once we do, we see there's wonder waiting on the other side. Every step you take brings the world one step closer. You'll narrow the influence of narrow minds. You'll bridge continents. Puncture prejudice. And keep peace. You may not always know it at the time, but one day you will look back and see that you've made this world a better place. So, the question you asked me - 'what is the key'? 

It's you.

- Trans-Siberian Railway 

   Travel the World Better

The Downfall of the Forth Estate

“If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions"
- Hsin Hsin Ming

A Perfect Circle of Death

“Have you ever seen the aftermath of a suicide bomber? I have. I was meeting two associates at a restaurant in Tel Aviv. As my car was pulling up, a twenty year old Palestinian entered the restaurant and detonated a vest wired with C4.

The shockwave knocked me flat, blew out my eardrums; I couldn't hear. The smoke.. it was like being underwater. I went inside – a nightmare. Blood, parts of people.. You could tell where he was standing when the vest blew. It was like.. a perfect circle of death.

There was almost nothing left of the people closest to him. 17 dead, 46 injured. Blown to pieces. The closer they were to the bomber, the more horrific the effect. 

That's every suicide. Every single one.

An act of terror, perpetrated against everyone who's ever known you. Everyone who's ever loved you. The people closest to you, the ones who cherish you, are the ones who suffer the most pain, the most damage. Why would you do that? Why would you do that to people who love you?”

- from the NBC television series, The Blacklist

James Spader as Ray Reddington

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

-T. S. Eliot

A Well-Deserved Rest, on the Sabbath

An excerpt from “Sabbath”:

In December 2014, I completed my memoir, “On the Move,” and gave the manuscript to my publisher, not dreaming that days later I would learn I had metastatic cancer, coming from the melanoma I had in my eye nine years earlier. I am glad I was able to complete my memoir without knowing this, and that I had been able, for the first time in my life, to make a full and frank declaration of my sexuality, facing the world openly, with no more guilty secrets locked up inside me.

In February, I felt I had to be equally open about my cancer — and facing death. I was, in fact, in the hospital when my essay on this, “My Own Life,” was published in this newspaper. In July I wrote another piece for the paper, “My Periodic Table,” in which the physical cosmos, and the elements I loved, took on lives of their own.

And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.

-From "Sabbath" by Oliver Sacks 

Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953

Do Better

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self"

― Ernest Hemingway