The Little Prince

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.

Rest in peace

Life, I love you,

All is groovy

Paul Simon - Fifty Ninth Street

Why would you play by the rules?

Once upon a time
When the world was just a pancake
Fears would arise
That if you went too far you’d fall
But with the passage of time
It all became more of a ball.
We’re as sure of that
As we all once were when the world was flat
Dodo - Dave Matthews

ecdysis

every three moves is like a fire - only the essentials remain
but what counts as essential... does not stay the same!

reduction is costly, is this why less is more?

Lost in translation?

If a document as old as the Tao Te Ching is translated to a more modern language such as modern Chinese or English is not a great deal of its meaning lost? A word that has matured over 2000 years has attached to it a plethora of historical contexts, and a multitude of meanings. In replacing it with a much younger one, do we not then replace this richness with a single more decisive meaning that may be restricted at best and incorrect at worst?

Yet every language was young in its infancy - perhaps the wisdom was superimposed post hoc...

same question different answer

S: So what does it mean?
N: *looking uncomfortable* it's the equivalent of "Belle".
S: *looking confused*
N: As in the French name for beautiful. It's in remembrance of my great grandmother with the same name.
S: oh.. *thinks for a while* Then I suppose your purpose is to show the world and people the beauty in life?
N: *smiles* I think I could handle that!

on dedication

Although most worthwhile achievements require dedication it would be folly to confound required investment with desirability. Giving more of oneself should not make the goal more desirable.

Also, while few things are truly impossible - they may cost more than they are worth. Or at least more than they are perceived to be worth.

Radical solution to global warming

Seriously?!

I'm badly in need of an afternoon's debauchery

~Debauchery - David Gray

Oh, Borges! =)

At that time it was also hoped that a clarification of humanity's basic mysteries -- the origin of the Library and of time -- might be found. It is verisimilar that these grave mysteries could be explained in words: if the language of philosophers is not sufficient, the multiform Library will have produced the unprecedented language required, with its vocabularies and grammars. For four centuries now men have exhausted the hexagons ... There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything.

As was natural, this inordinate hope was followed by an excessive depression. The certitude that some shelf in some hexagon held precious books and that these precious books were inaccessible, seemed almost intolerable. A blasphemous sect suggested that the searches should cease and that all men should juggle letters and symbols until they constructed, by an improbable gift of chance, these canonical books. The authorities were obliged to issue severe orders. The sect disappeared, but in my childhood I have seen old men who, for long periods of time, would hide in the latrines with some metal disks in a forbidden dice cup and feebly mimic the divine disorder.

~ Jorge Luis Borges The Library of Babel

Flow

"Which one is better? Above or below?"

"It's not that one is better. It's not a question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you are supposed to go down. When you are supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there is no flow, stay still... "

~The Wind-up Bird Chronical (Huraki Murakami)

Concise and abstract

"Good things or bad things?"

"Good things and bad things. Bad things that seem good at first, and good things that seem bad at first."

"That sounds very general, don't you have any more concrete information?"

"Yes, I suppose what I am saying does sound unspecific. But after all Mr. Okada, when one in speaking of the essence of things, it often happens that one can only speak in generalities. Concrete things capture one's attention , but they are often little more than trivia. Side shows. The more one tries to see into the distance, the more generalized things become."

~ The Wind-up Bird Chronical (Huraki Murakami)

Home and yet not home

"Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves.

At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accents, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place.

It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one."

~ Invisible cities (italo calvino)