if you're bored, you're not paying attention
words of wisdom
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
–Marge Piercy
“We come into temporary harmony with the water, and are fortunate to sometimes be allowed to pass through.”
Evan Morrison, open-water marathon swimmer, who notes that it echoes:
“The best one can hope for is to come to an agreement with a body of water on any given day.”… Story continues … “On not “crushing it” when swimming”
“Swimming cultivates imagination; the man with the most is he who can swim his solitary course night or day and forget a black earth full of people that push.”
–Annette Kellermann
Here’s a lovely turn of phrase from a friend of Tomasz Tunguz:
… Story continues … “We are Lent into Each Other’s Keeping”The entire story reminded me of an old friend who often tells me, “We are lent into each other’s keeping.” Our time with each other is borrowed, its duration is unknown, and that uncertainty makes it precious.
A gentleman never dances so well as the dancing master, and an ordinary fiddler makes better musique for a shilling than a gentleman will do after spending forty, and so in all the delights of the world almost.
–The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Weds.… Story continues … “So in all the delights of the world almost”
“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion.… Story continues … “If language is not correct”
“Everything worth doing takes time. You have to write a hundred bad songs before you write one good one. And you have to sacrifice a lot of things that you might not be prepared for. Like it or not, you are in this alone and have to follow your own star.”… Story continues … “A hundred bad songs”
“I have to say, I get a lot of inspiration from just going out and pretending I’ve never been to this planet before. It’s a great way to remember just how absurd, strange, beautiful, and unlikely everything is around you.”
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
“Do you know a cure for me?” “Why yes,” he said, “I know a cure for everything. Salt water.” “Salt water?” I asked him. “Yes,” he said, “in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
–Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blixen)