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Knowledge alone is like an unearned memory, mostly forgotten. Just facts and two-dimensional images. I wanted to physically discover the world, the old-fashioned way. To cross over mountains to see what was on the other side.
When I read this, it hit me that human civilization has managed to get so complex that we cannot trace out the consequences of our actions.
The trees began to tower above us, like a convention of gods, either speaking so far above that we couldn’t hear, or waiting for us to leave so they could begin again.
The coastal roads above San Francisco are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. Every turn is a bluff, a farm, cows grazing with a view of the ocean.
Place
He focused on his leg muscles, his form, his speed. I was not like that. I looked around and admired, meandered and felt pangs of love. When we stopped, usually at the crest of long inclines, I asked, “Weston, how amazing was that barn?” “What barn?” “How did you miss it? It was huge and right on the road. So amazing, falling apart, leaning to its left. I can’t believe it’s still standing!” “I didn’t see it.” In the evening, we would buy bottles of beer and sit around the campfire and talk. Weston was always talking. “I am pushing myself more each day,” he’d say. “I am a student of my own
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Remi dsme of isaac
I would be stripped of what made me feel safe to make room for something else.
Darwin and Steinbeck wrote alone by hand in leather-bound books that only later found an audience.
A dream of being a creative, or an executive, or a father. A dream is the myriad ways we could be fulfilled in life using our talents to make beautiful things. But then there are goals. Goals are specific guesses at what we could do or become to fulfill our dream. Dreams are like a compass that points in a general direction, and goals are the islands in the ocean along the way. Goals are just guesses at where to make a home, and when
“I’m not addicted,” Weston replied. “I feel called to it. When I smoke, it’s like saying my prayers. Makes me present. There’s a difference. One is a need. The other is a desire. A commitment.”
“Well, I’m no more addicted to this than you are to your phone. That little computer represents the world we’re leaving. Friends back home and screens. This flower is my connection to the present. To the unknown. To not planning. To letting life and this trip happen. Whatever.”
to have a look. Until the summer before I went to college, I kept
Pachamama
“Yeah, mysticism is when you don’t have intellectual certainty about stuff, but experientially you do believe in things, like beauty and mystery and the universe as a force for good. You move beyond the dualism of good and evil to a more unified whole, a sense that everything belongs.”
“No one knows why this town disappeared,” Valentin explained. “It is believed that this was the king’s retreat. And it was a holy place. And when the Spanish came, the people decided to forget it. They didn’t tell their children. They told no one, so that the Spanish would never know it was here. That is why it remained hidden for four centuries, until it was found in 1914.”
