“You’re always saying you’re too weak to be Strong. 
You’re harder on yourself than just about Anyone 

Why swim the channel just to get this far? 
Halfway there, why would you turn around? 

Darkness comes in waves…tell me, 
Why invite it to stay? 

You’re one with negativity 
Yes, comfort is an energy 
But why let the sad song play? 

I have faced it, a life wasted 
I’m never going back again 

Oh I escaped it, a life wasted 
I’m never going back again 

Having tasted, a life wasted 
I’m never going back again 

Oh I erased it, a life wasted 
I’m never going back again.”

– Pearl Jam, Life Wasted

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“You can’t go home, no I swear you never can
You can walk a million miles and get nowhere
I got no where to go and it seems I came back
Just filling in the lines for the holes, and the cracks

Hey, no one knows me
No one saves me
No one loves or hates me
I’ve been away for too long

This place has a special kind of falling apart
Like they put the whole thing together in the dark
No one knows where the edge of the knife is
And no one knows where intelligent life is

Hey, no one knows me
No one saves me
No one loves or hates me
Going straight
I only ever really wanted a break
I’ve been away for too long
No I never really wanted to stay
I’ve been away for too long.”

– Soundgarden, Been Away Too Long

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Certain songs are like a rallying cry.

They scream to me, freedom!

I feel alive and untethered.

With my movement I reject conformism and the status quo.

I am an animal allowing my cellular structure to air.

Songs can help maintain the lift.

By physically challenging myself, I prove to my I am not wasting my life.

But I’ve been away too long from this freedom in movement.

It sure feels good.

I know this feeling will not last.

But it cost me nothing to get here.

A little sweat.

A reminder to find connection with myself away from words and pages.

“The kindness of one human being to another in times of mass hatred and violence deserves more respect than the preaching of all the churches since the beginning of time.”

– Charles Simic, The Monster Loves His Labyrinth

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“There are millions of us in the same condition and still the papers think they thrill us by announcing catastrophes in enormous headlines. My wife and my children. What good does it do me to get upset if man is not the way I’d like him to be? (By what right? In whose name?) Four days ago for the first time I saw D. really suffering, giving in to suffering, without being able to comfort her. That upset me more than a war.”

– Georges Simenon, When I Was Old

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Our reality is a pretty tight circle around our five senses.

Those who are physically closer to us, who we rely on and who turn rely on us rightfully take up the majority of our attention.

By showing kindness, we take action.

Rather than advice, we move to help.

Move away from the screen and into the embrace of those you truly love.

“THE ONLY MAXIM – DON’T BE BORING
I have taken great inspiration from one film moment that struck me as a message about writing. In the first Alien, the surprise created when the alien bursts from Kane’s (the character played by John Hurt) chest is amazing. It sends a message to the audience that there are no boundaries in this movie.”

– Pen Densham, Riding the Alligator

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“For humor writing, you can saturate your sentences with interesting words. For business or professional writing, you might want to use one interesting word in an entire document. It will be noticed. In a good way.”

– Scott Adams, Reframe Your Brain

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Yawn.

The body’s automatic intake of oxygen.

A signal that the person is low on energy.

The worst reaction to witness when you are talking to someone.

Here I am talking to you.

Or talking to me, as I am the first audience.

I want to be interesting.

I suppose if I write about what is interesting to me, then my writing will always be interesting to myself.

But is it interesting to others?

I think there is a lot to be said for brevity. Keep things short, to the point, then get the hell out of here!

“For he lived in wait of something that he assumed was to come his way, and gave himself up to dreaming and “seeing” far more than to functioning in life. The sense he had that something particularly fine was about to happen remained with him throughout his life something which would solve all his problems and make his life simple and clear.

He “saw” this and waited . .. Thus, everything he did in life was merely “temporary,” what he had to do until the expected would finally come to pass.”

– A. R. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist

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“Most people never think about running out of time. They look ahead and see days and months and years of empty dates on the calendar, and assume they have plenty of time to fill them… We allow time to dictate so many of our decisions. How long will it take? When is it due? How much time should I put in? It’s late, I need to stop. What time does this end? Stop managing time, and start managing your focus.”

– Tim S. Grover, Winning

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Reading the Luria quote made my legs feel weak.

I recognised the pathology of his patient.

A life spent waiting.

An imaginary opportunity, unearned but expected.

But things don’t just happen, they emerge as the result of doing.

They require focus.

A deliberate intention followed swiftly by action.

Not everything works out.

Then you do something else.

I wish I could write from experience.

I have gotten pretty good at doing nothing.

It takes a lot of effort to start something new.

Rather than focus on a distant goal to get me moving, I figure out a system that I can sustain indefinitely.

I am not interested in intermittent rewards. I want things to last forever.

Pretty ambitious.

But by focusing on creating systems that I can sustain and be rewarded by for a lifetime, I engage in my life every day.

Read, Write, Walk.

These quotes remind me I don’t have a lot of time: every day counts.

I am choosing to count my days with posts about quotes.

“We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.”

– Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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The actual speed of life

is so much slower

we could have lived

exactly seven times as long

as we did.

– Jim Harrison, Time Suite, After Ikkyu

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It’s easy to let life rush by like the blur of hedgerows through the train window.

Who is driving the train?

Where am I going?

Why is it going so fast?

Good questions, perhaps not asked enough.

How do I slow down time?

Wouldn’t it be nicer to go for a walk?

Then I could make out the individual leaves in the hedge.

I can also swing my head round to see the sky, the ground, where I’m going and where I’ve come from.

Life at walking pace.

I think walking and reading work at the same physical speed.

I don’t need to rush either of them. Why bother?

Rushing will just ruin both activities.

I’ll add writing, to make a trifecta of slowness and attention.

Writing these posts I slow this part of the day to a pace where I can think and focus.

Because I write them every day, these moments of slowness accumulate.

My mind enjoys its walk.

I gain a little more life.

“The British-Egyptian heart surgeon Magdi Habib Yacoub goes for a walk every day…

I was curious and asked Yacoub what he had learned from studying thousands of beating human hearts. Yacoub replied, without much ado: “Go for a walk every day.” He assured me that this advice would never grow outdated.”

– Erling Kagge, Walking

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“Many years ago, while walking the streets of Berkeley, my eyes met those of a very old man coming toward me.            

He was very thin and wore a pair of white tennis shoes.  It was an unusual sight to see a man that old with such bounce in his step.  We automatically stopped to talk to each other.   

“I’m a walker,” he said.           

“That’s what I gather. I’m a walker, too.”            

“I walk forty blocks every day.”            

I was amazed.  “That far?  That’s equivalent to three or four miles.”            

“That’s right. When I was a young man I used to walk forty blocks without stopping.  I still walk that far, but nowadays it doesn’t matter how long it takes me to do it.”            

“How old are you?”            

“Eighty-five.”            

A year or so later I ran/walked into him again.

“Walk every day,” he told me.  “It doesn’t matter if it’s in the morning or evening, rain or shine, hot or cold, just get outside every day and walk.”

“Do you still walk forty blocks a day?”            

“I’ve changed my mind about that,” he said. “Walk fifteen, thirty, or forty minutes a day. The important thing is to get out and walk. You don’t have to walk fast or go up steep hills, any type of walking is fine.  If you keep at it you’ll last as long as me.”

…I sometimes think of that vibrant old man when I’m out for my daily walk.  What an inspiration he was to me.  Walking made him lively, aware, and in tune with the world.  If he was like that in his eighties, then there’s a good chance I can be that old and healthy, too.”

– Joseph Sutton, Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life

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I recently started taking an evening walk myself.

It is good for de-stressing my mind and body.

Often the only other people I encounter are those walking their dog.

They are out and about on behalf of someone else.

I am out for myself.

I don’t need the excuse or duty of a dog.

I know my animal self enough to know that if I’ve been cooped up in car and classroom I need to stretch my legs and lungs.

I have been scratching at the door demanding to go out and exercise.

The walk transforms me.

I return content, happy to curl up in my bed.

I have regained the day for me.

I am my own master and companion on these walks.

“If you’ve just spent ten hours digging ditches on a hot summer day you don’t enter the tavern and begin to talk about the virtues of hard work and thrift, the beauty of Calvinism as a moral system. You want several mugs of beer.”

– Jim Harrison, Off to the Side

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“I don’t mind the middle of the ocean, or a garden choked with hot peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes, but idealized nature has always struck me as a fool’s paradise.

The cow lets fall an even Golden stream of shit, Terence, you lie under And never mind a bit of it.

I forget where I read this gem, but these verses always come to my mind when I read pastoral poetry. Very nice, one says to oneself, but what about the farmer beyond that gorgeous meadow who works seven days a week from morning to night and is still starving? What about his sickly wife and their boy, who tortures cats? As my father used to say, if country living was any good, all these cities would not be so packed.”

– Charles Simic, The Life of Images

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We all have work to do.

Not all of us have poetry written about our vocation.

It’s easy to idealise what we don’t know and to fool ourselves that we want what others have.

At the same time we don’t like being preached to about someone else’s ideals.

Often we are simply tired and in need of a little refreshment.

Wherever we live and whatever we do, there is always hard work.

We are all familiar with the unique challenges of our present work.

It’s easy to assume the alternative, over the distant hill, will be simpler and more fulfilling.

It’s nice to have a glimpse from time to time.

The trick is not to be fooled by the supposed greener hills.

“When mentally fragile I like to drive to a far city, say at least a few hundred miles from any of the three modest places my family lives, check in to a somewhat pathetic brand-name motel with the pleasant feeling that I wouldn’t know a single soul in the local phone book. And that my own phone won’t ring except in the case of a dire event because my wife is well aware of my motives for staying in the anonymous room. Here I have shorn myself of my support systems and there is a fairly good chance that in a day or two I’ll discover the etiology of what ails me, keeping in mind that the overexamined life is also not worth living.”

– Jim Harrison, Off to the Side

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“But I don’t use other people as a reference for where I’m at. I never do that; I never have. I think that’s a mistake.

It doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate somebody else’s performance—or, in a business, appreciate somebody else’s success. I just think that, ultimately, if I believe myself to be so different, or even if it’s something that’s similar—it’s me doing it.

You can’t expect to be the only one that has a good idea. With all the people in the world, the idea that someone somewhere wouldn’t have similar ideas simultaneously? I think that’s unrealistic—it’s going to happen.

But you are the difference. Similar becomes different when an individual takes it and makes it.

I can see how using someone as a reference or benchmark might boost you a little bit—if somebody’s having a success in your area, you check them out—or you try something someone else is doing and you think, That’s interesting, that’s cool—but you have to make it your own.

Your unique twist will always be unique—it will always be something special.”

– Laird Hamilton, LIFERIDER

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It’s vitally important to recognise when I am not feeling my best and I need to do to restore myself.

Time to myself is essential. I need some solitary existence.

I can relate to Jim Harrison’s need to get away from his day to day responsibilities, to renew himself.

I cannot jump in my car and disappear for days at a time. It’s not a practical possibility and I don’t desire the break from my family.

Yet I still need to get away, from time to time.

What do I do?

A modest walk down to the seafront where I live, usually accompanied by an audiobook or podcast.

These walks are usually about an hour in duration. No time at all really.

But they provide me with all the time I need to hit reset.

I return invigorated from the fresh air and exercise. It does me good to stare at the distant horizon over the sea.

I might have learned something interesting or inspiring through my earphones.

I don’t want to mimick another’s practice but I feel free to be inspired.

Jim Harrison reminds me I need to get away to renew my soul.

Laird Hamilton reminds me that my body is remarkable and it needs to be used in unison with my mind.

But I am not Jim Harrison. I don’t wish to smoke American Spirit cigarettes and drink and eat myself into a state of gout.

Nor am I Laird Hamilton. I don’t wish to spend most of my life on the ocean, taking risks and pushing my body to its limits.

By reading widely I increase the chance of being reminded of the obvious.

But I am never obliged to follow in another’s footsteps.

It’s more exciting to make my own.

“WE ALL LIVE IN A STATE OF PROFOUND ISOLATION.

NO OTHER HUMAN BEING CAN EVER KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE YOU FROM THE INSIDE.

AND NO AMOUNT OF REACHING OUT TO OTHERS CAN EVER MAKE THEM FEEL EXACTLY WHAT YOU FEEL.

ALL MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION ARE A BY-PRODUCT OF OUR SAD INABILITY TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY FROM MIND TO MIND.

SAD, OF COURSE, BECAUSE NEARLY ALL PROBLEMS IN HUMAN HISTORY STEM FROM THAT INABILITY.

EACH MEDIUM (THE TERM COMES FROM THE LATIN WORD MEANING MIDDLE) SERVES AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN MINDS.

MEDIA CONVERT THOUGHTS INTO FORMS

THAT CAN TRAVERSE THE PHYSICAL WORLD AND BE RE-CONVERTED BY ONE OR MORE SENSES BACK INTO THOUGHTS.”

– Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics

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“The path forward is about curiosity, generosity, and connection. These are the three foundations of art. Art is a tool that gives us the ability to make things better and to create something new on behalf of those who will use it to create the next thing. Human connection is exponential: it scales as we create it, weaving together culture and possibility where none used to exist.”

Seth Godin, The Practice

__________

Connection makes us human.

It is communication over an infinite time and space.

We don’t need to be in the same room together to communicate.

I am building a bridge to you with these words, one brick at a time.

You cannot cross that bridge to to enter through the door of my mind.

But you can peek through the window.

“For everything written there are thoughts, notes, that no one will use if he has not done something with them. Notes that a writer collects are of no meaning to another, no one else could make the connections. Every time a great scholar dies something unique vanishes out of the universe, a way of thinking that will never be expressed again.”

– Loren Eiseley, The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley

__________

““The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

– Henry David Thoreau, quoted in The Life of Images by Charles Simic

__________

We read to unearth the one true point of view of the writer.

We write about what is on our mind.

That is what we sense, what ensnares us: our unique way of seeing.

As a reader, I enjoy the singular, focused view of the individual.

Can AI replace the writer?

I think not.

It provides a blurred composite.

We need leadership of vision rather than a picture by committee.

Isn’t that what AI is? One big committee? A picture by consensus.

We cannot fully explain consciousness- how the mechanics of the body and chemicals of the brain create us.

At the same time, no matter how broad the inputs, AI is artificially created with software and algorithms.

There is no unique point of view.

No soul.

Give me the divine mystery of the individual over the megalomaniac overview of AI

I am an artist. a writer, an individual.

These are my words. I selected the quotes above, taken from books I have read.

For better or worse, these are the connections I have made.