Exhalation
for like infernal fire, grief burns but does not consume; instead, it makes the heart vulnerable to further suffering.
“Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity,”
We are not really consuming air at all. The amount of air that I draw from each day’s new pair of lungs is exactly as much as seeps out through the joints of my limbs and the seams of my casing, exactly as much as I am adding to the atmosphere around me;
in the marginLinks to Into The Cool
Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.
People are made of stories.
It seemed to me that a perfect memory couldn’t be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film.
Within our minds, each of us will be transformed from an oral culture into a literate one.
What digital memory will do is change those stories from fabulations that emphasize our best acts and elide our worst, into ones that—I hope—acknowledge our fallibility and make us less judgmental about the fallibility of others.
Let me always be inquisitive, but never be suspicious.
Let me be compassionate while remaining true to my convictions. Amen.
If we have only ever been on our own, then our successes in spite of that are proof of our capabilities.