From Theft By Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 by David Sedaris:
August 2, 1981 Raleigh
Ronnie is incensed over the royal wedding. "Did you know that silkworms spun the fabric for her dress?" "Silkworms spin everyone's silk," I told her. "That's where silk comes from." Somewhere she heard that four hundred bears were killed and turned into hats.We went to the movies, and all I thought the entire time was Where on earth does she get her information from?
Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Twelve Stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare "Don Quixote and the Ambiguity of Reading" by Ben Okri
'I have read books backwards and inside out. I began reading Ovid in the middle and then to the end and then from the beginning. I once read every other sentence of a book I knew well and then went back and read the sentences I missed out. We are all children in the art of reading. We assume there is only one way to read a book. But a book read in a new way becomes a different book.' I felt he was reading me as he spoke. 'And you have the nerve to tell me I am reading slowly. Part of the trouble with our world, my snooty young friend, is that the art of reading is almost dead. Reading is the secret of life. We read the world poorly, because we read poorly. Everything is reading. You are trying to read me now.'
C'mon brianlux , you know you want to post some excerpts!
I'm thinkin', I'm thinkin'
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
"Try to not spook the horse."
-Neil Young
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,310
OK, here we go...
"Since I was eight or so, I had been internalizing the written words of persons who had seen and felt things new to me instead of, 'aye-eem, aye-eem, aye-eem.' The world dropped away when I did it. When I read an absorbing book, my pulse and respiration rate slowed down perceptibly, just as though I were doing TM. I was already a veteran meditator. When I awoke from my Western-style meditation I was often a wiser human being. And I tell this story because so many people nowadays regard printed pages as nothing more than obsolescent technology, first developed by the Chinese two thousand years ago. Books came into being, surely, as practical schemes for transmitting or storing information, no more romantic in Gutenberg's time than a computer in ours. So it happens though- a wholly unforeseen accident- that the feel and appearance of a book when combined with a literate person in a straight chair can create a spiritual condition of priceless depth and meaning."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death, p.188
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
At first, the tired body takes over completely. As on shipboard, one descends into a deck-chair apathy. One is forced against one's mind, against all tidy resolutions, back into the primeval rhythms of the seashore. Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules. One falls under their spell, relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact, like the element on which one lies, flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today's tides of all yesterday's scribblings. And then, some morning in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense---no--- but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. One never knows what chance treasures these easy unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind; what perfectly rounded stone, what rare shell from the ocean floor. Perhaps a channelled whelk, a moon shell or even an argonaut. But it must not be sought for or---heaven forbid!--- dug for. No, no dredging of the sea bottom here. That would defeat one's purpose. The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach---waiting for a gift from the sea.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 42,310
^^^Nice one, OSG!
"Pretty cookies, heart squares all around, yeah!" -Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Comments
August 2, 1981
Raleigh
Ronnie is incensed over the
royal wedding. "Did you know
that silkworms spun the fabric
for her dress?"
"Silkworms spin everyone's
silk," I told her. "That's where
silk comes from."
Somewhere she heard that
four hundred bears were killed
and turned into hats.We went to
the movies, and all I thought the
entire time was Where on earth
does she get her information
from?
"Don Quixote and the Ambiguity of Reading" by Ben Okri
'I have read books backwards and inside out. I
began reading Ovid in the middle and then to the
end and then from the beginning. I once read every
other sentence of a book I knew well and then went
back and read the sentences I missed out. We are
all children in the art of reading. We assume there
is only one way to read a book. But a book read in
a new way becomes a different book.'
I felt he was reading me as he spoke.
'And you have the nerve to tell me I am reading
slowly. Part of the trouble with our world, my snooty
young friend, is that the art of reading is almost dead.
Reading is the secret of life. We read the world poorly,
because we read poorly. Everything is reading. You are
trying to read me now.'
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
"Since I was eight or so, I had been internalizing the written words of persons who had seen and felt things new to me instead of, 'aye-eem, aye-eem, aye-eem.' The world dropped away when I did it. When I read an absorbing book, my pulse and respiration rate slowed down perceptibly, just as though I were doing TM.
I was already a veteran meditator. When I awoke from my Western-style meditation I was often a wiser human being. And I tell this story because so many people nowadays regard printed pages as nothing more than obsolescent technology, first developed by the Chinese two thousand years ago. Books came into being, surely, as practical schemes for transmitting or storing information, no more romantic in Gutenberg's time than a computer in ours. So it happens though- a wholly unforeseen accident- that the feel and appearance of a book when combined with a literate person in a straight chair can create a spiritual condition of priceless depth and meaning."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Fates Worse Than Death, p.188
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Kurt Vonnegut is the balls.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
At first, the tired body takes over completely.
As on shipboard, one descends into a deck-chair
apathy. One is forced against one's mind, against
all tidy resolutions, back into the primeval rhythms
of the seashore. Rollers on the beach, wind in the
pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes,
drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time
tables and schedules. One falls under their spell,
relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact,
like the element on which one lies, flattened by the
sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today's
tides of all yesterday's scribblings.
And then, some morning in the second week, the
mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense---no---
but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over in
gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach.
One never knows what chance treasures these easy
unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white
sand of the conscious mind; what perfectly rounded stone,
what rare shell from the ocean floor. Perhaps a channelled
whelk, a moon shell or even an argonaut.
But it must not be sought for or---heaven forbid!---
dug for. No, no dredging of the sea bottom here. That
would defeat one's purpose. The sea does not reward
those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient.
To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed,
but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea
teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open,
choiceless as a beach---waiting for a gift from the sea.
-Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"