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If We Mammals Don't Get Something To Eat Every Day Or Two, Our Temperature Drops, All Our Signs Fall Off, And We Begin To Starve. Living At Biological Red Alert, It's Not Surprising How Obsessed We Are With Food; I'm Just Amazed We Don't Pace And Fret About It All The Time.

-Diane Ackerman

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If We Mammals Don't

Diane Ackerman

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If We Mammals Don't Get Something To Eat Every Day Or Two, Our Temperature Drops, All Our Signs Fall Off, And We Begin To Starve. Living At Biological Red Alert, It's Not Surprising How Obsessed We Are With Food; I'm Just Amazed We Don't Pace And Fret About It All The Time.

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As A Species, We've Somehow Survived Large And Small Ice Ages, Genetic Bottlenecks, Plagues, World Wars And All Manner Of Natural Disasters, But I Sometimes Wonder If We'll Survive Our Own Ingenuity.

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The Daftest Logic Brings Such Sweet Unrest.

Mystery Causes A Mental Itch, Which The Brain Tries To Soothe With The Balm Of Reasonable Talk.

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In Rare Moments Of Deep Play, We Can Lay Aside Our Sense Of Self, Shed Time's Continuum, Ignore Pain, And Sit Quietly In The Absolute Present, Watching The World's Ordinary Miracles. No Mind Or Heart Hobbles. No Analyzing Or Explaining. No Questing For Logic. No Promises. No Goals. No Relationships. No Worry. One Is Completely Open To Whatever Drama May Unfold.

Working From Home Meant We Could Vary Snack And Coffee Breaks, Change Our Desks Or View, Goof Off, Drink On The Job, Even Spend The Day In Pajamas, And Often Meet To Gossip Or Share Ideas. On The Other Hand, We Bossed Ourselves Around, Set Impossible Goals, And Demanded Longer Hours Than Office Jobs Usually Entail. It Was The Ultimate "flextime," In That It Depended On How Flexible We Felt Each Day, Given Deadlines, Distractions, And Workaholic Crescendos.

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Writer's Block Is A Luxury Most People With Deadlines Don't Have.

I Don't Want To Be A Passenger In My Own Life.

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When I Set A Glass Prism On A Windowsill And Allow The Sun To Flood Through It, A Spectrum Of Colors Dances On The Floor. What We Call "white" Is A Rainbow Of Colored Rays Packed Into A Small Space. The Prism Sets Them Free. Love Is The White Light Of Emotion.

Nature Is More Like A Seesaw Than A Crystal, A Never-ending Conga Line Of Bold Moves And Corrections.

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As Fleeting Emotions Stalk It, A Face Can Leak Fear Or The Guilt Of A Forming Lie.

Adventure Is Not Something You Travel To Find. It's Something You Take With You, Or You're Not Going To Find It When You Arrive.

Poetry Reminds Us Of The Truths About Life And Human Nature That We Knew All Along, But Forgot Somehow Because They Weren't Yet In Memorable Language.

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We Have Vexed And Bothered Every Plant And Every Animal On Every Continent.

One Of The Keystones Of Romantic Love - And Also Of The Ecstatic Religion Practiced By Mystics - Is The Powerful Desire To Become One With The Beloved.

Habit, A Particularly Insidious Thug Who Chokes Passion And Smothers Love. Habit Puts Us On Autopilot.

I Watched Her Face Switch Among The Radio Stations Of Memory

We Can't Enchant The World, Which Makes Its Own Magic; But We Can Enchant Ourselves By Paying Deep Attention

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Hurricane Season Brings A Humbling Reminder That, Despite Our Technologies, Most Of Nature Remains Unpredictable.

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The Biggest Threat To The Religious Experience May Well Come From Organized Religion Itself.

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Home Is Where The Heart Is

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It Began In Mystery, And It Will End In Mystery, But What A Savage And Beautiful Country Lies In Between.

For If I Do Something, I Never Do It Thoughtlessly.

Living With Anyone For Many Years Takes Skill. To Keep Peace In The Household, Couples Learn To Adapt To One Another, Hopefully In Positive Ways.

Choice Is A Signature Of Our Species.

What An Odd, Ruminating, Noisy, Self-interrupting Conversation We Conduct With Ourselves From Birth To Death.

One Can Live At A Low Flame. Most People Do. For Some, Life Is An Exercise In Moderation (best China Saved For Special Occasions), But Given Something Like Death, What Does It Matter If One Looks Foolish Now And Then, Or Tries Too Hard, Or Cares Too Deeply?

A Self Is A Frightening Thing To Waste, It's The Lens Through Which One's Whole Life Is Viewed, And Few People Are Willing To Part With It, In Death, Or Even Imaginatively, In Art.

I Consider Fiction A Very High-class Form Of Lying. I Enjoy And Admire It Enormously, But I Don't Think I'm Very Good At It.

Nothing Is More Memorable Than A Smell. One Scent Can Be Unexpected, Momentary And Fleeting, Yet Conjure Up A Childhood Summer Beside A Lake In The Mountains...

There Are Well-dressed Foolish Ideas Just As There Are Well-dressed Fools.

I Don't Want To Get To The End Of My Life And Find That I Lived Just The Length Of It. I Want To Have Lived The Width Of It As Well.

I Am A Great Fan Of The Universe, Which I Take Literally: As One. All Of It Interests Me, And It Interests Me In Detail.

Look At Your Feet. You Are Standing In The Sky. When We Think Of The Sky, We Tend To Look Up, But The Sky Actually Begins At The Earth.

On Some Summer Days In New York City, The Air Hangs Thickly Visible, Like The Combined Exhalations Of Eight Million Souls. Steam Rising From Vents Underground Makes You Wonder If There Isn't One Giant Sweat Gland Lodged Beneath The City.

When You Consider Something Like Death, After Which (there Being No News Flash To The Contrary) We May Well Go Out Like A Candle Flame, Then It Probably Doesn't Matter If We Try Too Hard, Are Awkward Sometimes, Care For One Another Too Deeply, Are Excessively Curious About Nature, Are Too Open To Experience, Enjoy A Nonstop Expense Of The Senses In An Effort To Know Life Intimately And Lovingly.

Though We Marry As Adults, We Don't Marry Adults. We Marry Children Who Have Grown Up And Still Rejoice In Being Children, Especially If We're Creative.

Though Most Of Us Don't Hunt, Our Eyes Are Still The Great Monopolists Of Our Senses. To Taste Or Touch Your Enemy Or Your Food, You Have To Be Unnervingly Close To It. To Smell Or Hear It, You Can Risk Being Further Off. But Vision Can Rush Through The Fields And Up The Mountains, Travel Across Time, Country, And Parsecs Of Outer Space, And Collect Bushel Baskets Of Information As It Goes. Animals That Hear High Frequencies Better Than We Do

We Think Of It As A Sort Of Traffic Accident Of The Heart. It Is An Emotion That Scares Us More Than Cruelty, More Than Violence, More Than Hatred. We Allow Ourselves To Be Foiled By The Vagueness Of The Word. After All, Love Requires The Utmost Vulnerability. We Equip Someone With Freshly Sharpened Knives; Strip Naked; Then Invite Him To Stand Close. What Could Be Scarier?

Hit A Tripwire Of Smell And Memories Explode All At Once. A Complex Vision Leaps Out Of The Undergrowth.

There Is A Way Of Beholding Nature Which Is A Form Of Prayer, A Way Of Minding Something With Such Clarity And Aliveness That The Rest Of The World Recedes. It . . . Gives The Brain A Small Vacation.

I Try To Give Myself Passionately, Totally, To Whatever I'm Observing, With As Much Affectionate Curiosity As I Can Muster, As A Means Of Understanding A Little Better What Being Human Is.

An Occasion, Catalyst, Or Tripwire?permits The Poet To Reach Into Herself And Haul Up Whatever Nugget Of The Human Condition Distracts Her At The Moment, Something That Can't Be Reached In Any Other Way.

Culture Is What People Invent When They Have Lost Nature.

Our Sense Of Safety Depends On Predictability, So Anything Living Outside The Usual Rules We Suspect To Be An Outlaw, A Ghoul.

Success Produces Success, Just As Money Produces Money.

Positive Attitude

All Relationships Change The Brain - But Most Important Are The Intimate Bonds That Foster Or Fail Us, Altering The Delicate Circuits That Shape Memories, Emotions And That Ultimate Souvenir, The Self.

Wonder Is The Heaviest Element On The Periodic Table. Even A Tiny Fleck Of It Stops Time.

I'm Certainly Not Opposed To Digital Technology, Whose Graces I Daily Enjoy And Rely On In So Many Ways. But I Worry About Our Virtual Blinders.

Who You Are Isn't Tied Solely To What You Say, Even Though It May Feel That Way To You Now.

Tranquillity Hides In Small Spaces, And When Found Needs To Be Treasured, Because You Know It's A Phantom That Will Slip Away Again.

Wonder Is A Bulky Emotion. When You Let It Fill Your Heart And Mind, There Isn't Room For Anxiety, Distress Or Anything Else.

Despite Not Knowing If What He Felt From Moment To Moment Would Pass Or Last Forever, He Entered Fully Into His Shifting States Of Violent Rage, Self-pity, Longing, Heartbreak, Cynicism, Without Losing The Ability To Think About What Was Happening To Him. That Took Courage, I Thought, Living With The Suffering In A Mindful Way, As An Artifact Of Being, Neither Good Nor Bad.

We Live On The Leash Of Our Senses.

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Carlos Castaneda

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