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We Tend To Think Of Memories As Monuments We Once Forged And May Find Intact Beneath The Weedy Growth Of Years. But, In A Real Sense, Memories Are Tied To And Describe The Present. Formed In An Idiosyncratic Way When They Happened, They're Also True To The Moment Of Recall, Including How You Feel, All You've Experienced, And New Values, Passions, And Vulnerability. One Never Steps Into The Same Stream Of Consciousness Twice.

-Diane Ackerman

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We Tend To Think

Diane Ackerman

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We Tend To Think Of Memories As Monuments We Once Forged And May Find Intact Beneath The Weedy Growth Of Years. But, In A Real Sense, Memories Are Tied To And Describe The Present. Formed In An Idiosyncratic Way When They Happened, They're Also True To The Moment Of Recall, Including How You Feel, All You've Experienced, And New Values, Passions, And Vulnerability. One Never Steps Into The Same Stream Of Consciousness Twice.

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Because Poets Feel What We're Afraid To Feel, Venture Where We're Reluctant To Go, We Learn From Their Journeys Without Taking The Same Dramatic Risks.

It's Animal By Animal That You Save A Species.

I Like Handling Newborn Animals. Fallen Into Life From An Unmappable World, They Are The Ultimate Immigrants, Full Of Wonder And Confusion.

The Well Of Nature Is Full Today. Time To Go Outside And Take A Drink.

The Idea Of Safety Had Shrunk Into Particles - One Snug Moment, Then The Next. Meanwhile, The Brain Piped Fugues Of Worry And Staged Mind-theaters Full Of Tragedies And Triumphs, Because Unfortunately, The Fear Of Death Does Wonders To Focus The Mind, Inspire Creativity, And Heightens The Senses. Trusting One's Hunches Only Seems Gamble If One Has Time For Seem; Otherwise The Brain Goes On Autopilot And Trades The Elite Craft Of Analysis For The Best Rapid Insights That Float Up From Its Danger Files And Ancient Bag Of Tricks.

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.

Libraries Change Lives. They Are The Soul Of A People.

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.

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

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.

Knee-deep In The Cosmic Overwhelm, I’m Stricken By The Ricochet Wonder Of It All: The Plain Everythingness Of Everything, In Cahoots With The Everythingness Of Everything Else.

Hope And Uncertainty [are] The Twin Ingredients Necessary For Romance To Thrive. ... Nothing Begins With So Much Excitement And Hope, Or Fails As Often, As Love.

Humans Are The Most Successful Invasives Of All Time.

Flight Is Nothing But An Attitude In Motion.

We Ogle Plants And Animals Up Close On Television, The Internet And In The Movies. We May Not Worship The Animals We See, But We Still Regard Them As Necessary Physical And Spiritual Companions. Technological Nature Can't Completely Satisfy That Yearning.

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Because Iq Tests Favor Memory Skills And Logic, Overlooking Artistic Creativity, Insight, Resiliency, Emotional Reserves, Sensory Gifts, And Life Experience, They Can't Really Predict Success, Let Alone Satisfaction.

It's So Acceptably Easy For A Woman Not To Strive Too Hard, Not To Be Too Adventure-crazed, Not To Take Too Many Risks, Not To Enjoy Sex With Full Candor ... It Isn't Seemly For A Woman To Have That Much Zest.

Couples Are Jigsaw Puzzles That Hang Together By Touching In Just Enough Points. They're Never Total Fits Or Misfits. In Time, A Pair Invents Its Own Commonwealth, Complete With Anthems, Rituals, And Lingos-a Cult Of Two With Fallible Gods.

Culture Is What People Invent When They Have Lost Nature.

The Great Affair, The Love Affair With Life, Is To Live As Variously As Possible, To Groom One's Curiosity Like A High-spirited Thoroughbred, Climb Aboard, And Gallop Over The Thick, Sunstruck Hills Every Day.

Happiness Doesn't Require Laughter, Only Well-being And A Sense That The World Is Breaking Someone Else's Heart, Not Mine.

When I Go Biking, I Repeat A Mantra Of The Day's Sensations: Bright Sun, Blue Sky, Warm Breeze, Blue Jay's Call, Ice Melting And So On. This Helps Me Transcend The Traffic, Ignore The Clamorings Of Work, Leave All The Mind Theaters Behind And Focus On Nature Instead. I Still Must Abide By The Rules Of The Road, Of Biking, Of Gravity. But I Am Mentally Far Away From Civilization. The World Is Breaking Someone Else's Heart.

What A Lonely Species We Are, Searching For Signals Of Life From Other Galaxies, Adopting Companion Animals, Visiting Parks And Zoos To Commune With Other Beasts. In The Process, We Discover Our Shared Identity.

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

Part Of The Irony Of Environmentalism Is Questing For Solutions When You Know You're Part Of The Problem.

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.

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.

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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.

Love Is The White Light Of Emotion.

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

History Is An Agreed-upon Fiction.

Success Produces Success, Just As Money Produces Money.

Positive Attitude

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Love Is The Great Intangible. ... Frantic And Serene, Vigilant And Calm, Wrung-out And Fortified, Explosive And Sedate -- Love Commands A Vast Army Of Moods. Hoping For Victory, Limping From The Latest Skirmish, Lovers Enter The Arena Once Again. ... Love Is The White Light Of Emotion. ... Everyone Admits That Love Is Wonderful And Necessary, Yet No One Can Agree On What It Is.

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Who Would Deduce The Dragonfly From The Larva, The Iris From The Bud, The Lawyer From The Infant? ...we Are All Shape-shifters And Magical Reinventors. Life Is Really A Plural Noun, A Caravan Of Selves.

The More We Exile Ourselves From Nature, The More We Crave Its Miracle Waters.

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Like Love, Travel Makes You Innocent Again.

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Smell Brings To Mind... A Family Dinner Of Pot Roast And Sweet Potatoes During A Myrtle-mad August In A Midwestern Town. Smells Detonate Softly In Our Memory Like Poignant Land Mines Hidden Under The Weedy Mass Of Years.

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.

Life Is A Thing That Mutates Without Warning, Not Always In Enviable Ways. All Part Of The Improbable Adventure Of Being Alive, Of Being A Brainy Biped With Giant Dreams On A Crazy Blue Planet.

Of All The Errands Life Seems To Be Running, Of All The Mysteries That Enchant Us, Love Is My Favorite

We Are Defined By How We Place Our Attention.

Words Are Small Shapes In The Gorgeous Chaos Of The World.

Home Is Where The Heart Is, We Say, Rubbing The Flint Of One Abstraction Against Another.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

I Watched Her Face Switch Among The Radio Stations Of Memory

Everyone Admits That Love Is Wonderful And Necessary, Yet No One Agrees On Just What It Is.

Falling In Love

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

Not Much Is Known About Alligators. They Don't Train Well. And They're Unwieldy And Rowdy To Work With In Laboratories.

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In The Absence Of Touching And Being Touched, People Of All Ages Can Sicken And Grow Touched Starved. Touch Seems To Be As Essential As Sunlight.

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. We Walk Through It, Yell Into It, Rake Leaves, Wash The Dog, And Drive Cars In It. We Breathe It Deep Within Us. With Every Breath, We Inhale Millions Of Molecules Of Sky, Heat Them Briefly, And Then Exhale Them Back Into The World.

Above All, We Ask The Poet To Teach Us A Way Of Seeing.

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People Search For Love As If It Were A City Lost Beneath The Desert Dunes, Where Pleasure Is The Law, The Streets Are Lined With Brocade Cushions, And The Sun Never Sets.

Give A Man Enough Rope And He'll Wrap Himself Around Your Little Finger.

We're Losing Biodiversity Globally At An Alarming Rate, And We Need A Cornucopia Of Different Plants And Animals, For The Planet's Health And Our Own.

Choice Is A Signature Of Our Species.

The Knowing, I Told Myself, Is Only A Vapor Of The Mind, And Yet It Can Wreck Havok With One's Sanity.

As Anyone Who Has Received Or Dispensed Psychotherapy Knows, It's A Profession Whose Mainspring Is Love. Nearly Everyone Who Visits A Therapist Has A Love Disorder Of One Sort Or Another, And Each Has A Story To Tell - Of Love Lost Or Denied, Love Twisted Or Betrayed, Love Perverted Or Shackled To Violence. Broken Attachments Litter The Office Floors Like Pick-up Sticks. People Appear With Frayed Seams And Spilling Pockets.

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.

Ecstasy Is What Everyone Craves - Not Love Or Sex, But A Hot-blooded, Soaring Intensity, In Which Being Alive Is A Joy And A Thrill. That Enravishment Doesn't Give Meaning To Life, And Yet Without It Life Seems Meaningless.

The Further We Distance Ourselves From The Spell Of The Present, Explored By Our Senses, The Harder It Will Be To Understand And Protect Nature's Precarious Balance, Let Alone The Balance Of Our Own Human Nature.

I'm Fascinated How Often And With What Whole-heartedness People Will Risk Their Lives To Perform Acts Of Courage, Sacrifice, And Compassion For Total Strangers.

When I Go Biking, I Am Mentally Far Far Away From Civilization. The World Is Breaking Someone Else's Heart.

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.

Who Would Drink From A Cup When They Can Drink From The Source?

We Would Lie On Coral Sand, Below Sugary Stars, Watching Cassiopeia Mount Her Throne And The Great Bear Wash Its Paws In The South. I Would Say, "i Have A Secret To Tell You." And, Folding Me In Your Arms, Boyish And Sly, You Would Answer: "whisper It Into My Mouth.

Touch Seems To Be As Essential As Sunlight.

A Kiss Is Like Singing Into Someone's Mouth.

There Is That Unique Moment When One Confronts Something New And Astonishment Begins.

Much Of Life Becomes Background, But It Is The Province Of Art To Throw Buckets Of Light Into The Shadows And Make Life New Again.

I'm An Earth Ecstatic, And My Creed Is Simple: All Life Is Sacred, Life Loves Life, And We Are Capable Of Improving Our Behavior Toward One Another. As Basic As That Is, For Me It's Also Tonic And Deeply Spiritual, Glorifying The Smallest Life-form And Embracing The Most Distant Stars.

One Of The Things I Like Best About Animals In The Wild Is That They're Always Off On Some Errand. They Have Appointments To Keep. It's Only We Humans Who Wonder What We're Here For.

The Visual Image Is A Kind Of Tripwire For The Emotions.

If Cynicism Is Inevitable As One Ages, So Is The Yearning For Innocence. To Children Heaven Is Being An Adult, And To Adults Heaven Is Being Children Again.

Our Skin Is What Stands Between Us And The World.

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

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

In The Early Years Of The Uprising, We Survived On One Meal A Day Of Horse Meat And Soup, But By The End We Ate Only Dried Peas, Dogs, Cats And Birds.

Because We Can't Escape Our Ancient Hunger To Live Close To Nature, We Encircle The House With Lawns And Gardens, Install Picture Windows, Adopt Pets And Boston Ferns, And Scent Everything That Touches Our Lives.

Complexity Excites The Mind, And Order Rewards It. In The Garden, One Finds Both, Including Vanishingly Small Orders Too Complex To Spot, And Orders So Vast The Mind Struggles To Embrace Them.

We Tend To Think Of Heroes Only In Terms Of Violent Combat, Whether It's Against Enemies Or A Natural Disaster. But Human Beings Also Perform Radical Acts Of Compassion; We Just Don't Talk About Them, Or We Don't Talk About Them As Much.

In Our Heart We Know That Life Loves Life. Yet We Feast On Some Of The Other Life-forms With Which We Share Our Planet; We Kill To Live. Taste Is What Carries Us Across That Rocky Moral Terrain, What Makes The Horror Palatable, And The Paradox We Could Not Defend By Reason Melts Into A Jungle Of Sweet Temptations.

Words Are Small Shapes In The Gorgeous Chaos Of The World. ... They Bring The World Into Focus, They Corral Ideas, They Hone Thoughts, They Paint Watercolors Of Perception.

Look In The Mirror. The Face That Pins You With Its Double Gaze Reveals A Chastening Secret.

Knowing Who You Are

Keeping Secrets

Words Are Such Small Things, Like Confetti In The Brain, And Yet They Are Color And Clarify Everything, They Can Stain The Mind Or Warp The Feelings.

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?

American Writer 1803-1882 Play Is Our Brain's Favorite Way Of Learning.

Poetry Is An Act Of Distillation. It Takes Contingency Samples, Is Selective. It Telescopes Time. It Focuses What Most Often Floods Past Us In A Polite Blur.

Adult Bats Don't Weigh Much. They're Mainly Fur And Appetite.

Violets Smell Like Burnt Sugar Cubes That Have Been Dipped In Lemon And Velvet.

A Poem Records Emotions And Moods That Lie Beyond Normal Language, That Can Only Be Patched Together And Hinted At Metaphorically.

So Before I Start Work On A Book, I'm Like A Pregnant Mole - I Obsessively Tidy And Order My Closets And Everything In My Study. Because There's Such A Cascade Of Images And Ideas That I'm Grapping With Mentally, I Couldn't Also Be In A Chaotic Setting.

Nothing Reveals More About The Inner Life Of A People Than Their Arts.

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.

Love Is The Best School, But The Tuition Is High And The Homework Can Be Painful.

We Live On The Leash Of Our Senses. There Is No Way In Which To Understand The World Without First Detecting It Through The Radar-net Of Our Senses.

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.

Writing Is My Form Of Celebration And Prayer.

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

It's Essential To Tailor Rehab To What Impassions Someone. The Brain Gradually Learns By Riveting Its Attention-through Endless Repetitions.

As People Flock To Urban Centers Where Ground Space Is Limited, Cities With Green Walls And Roofs And Skyscraper Farms Offer Improved Health And Well-being, Renewable Resources, Reliable Food Supply, And Relief To The Environment.

Symbolic Of Life, Hair Bolts From Our Head[s]. Like The Earth, It Can Be Harvested, But It Will Rise Again. We Can Change Its Color And Texture When The Mood Strikes Us, But In Time It Will Return To Its Original Form, Just As Nature Will In Time Turn Our Precisely Laid-out Cities Into A Weed-way.

[on Gardens:] I Think They're Sanctuaries For The Mind And Spirit. ... It's Easy To Feel Wonder-struck In A Garden, Especially If You Cultivate Delight.

In Manhattan Last Month I Heard A Woman Borrowing The Jargon Of Junkies To Say To Another, 'want To Do Some Chocolate?'

As The Most Social Apes, We Inhabit A Mirror-world In Which Every Important Relationship, Whether With Spouse, Friend Or Child, Shapes The Brain, Which In Turn Shapes Our Relationships.

Important Relationships

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

The Heart Is A Museum, Filled With The Exhibits Of A Lifetime's Loves.

For Me, Life Offers So Many Complexly Appealing Moments That Two Beautiful Objects May Be Equally Beautiful For Different Reasons And At Different Times. How Can One Choose?

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

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.

The Great Affair, The Love Affair With Life, Is To Live As Variously As Possible, To Groom One's Curiosity Like A High-spirited Thoroughbred, Climb Aboard, And Gallop Over The Thick, Sun-struck Hills Every Day. Where There Is No Risk, The Emotional Terrain Is Flat And Unyielding, And, Despite All Its Dimensions, Valleys, Pinnacles, And Detours, Life Will Seem To Have None Of Its Magnificent Geography, Only A Length. It Began In Mystery, And It Will End In Mystery, But What A Savage And Beautiful Country Lies In Between.

Habitats Keep Evolving New Pageants Of Species, And We Shouldn't Interfere.

If A Mind Is Just A Few Pounds Of Blood, Urea, And Electricity, How Does It Manage To Contemplate Itself, Worry About Its Soul, Do Time-and-motion Studies, Admire The Shy Hooves Of A Goat, Know That It Will Die, Enjoy All The Grand And Lesser Mayhems Of The Heart ?

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; Another, A Moonlit Beach; A Third, A Family Dinner Of Pot Roast And Sweet Potatoes During A Myrtle-mad August In A Midwestern Town. Smells Detonate Softly In Our Memory Like Poignant Land Mines Hidden Under The Weedy Mass Of Years. Hit A Tripwire Of Smell And Memories Explode All At Once. A Complex Vision Leaps Out Of The Undergrowth.

There Was Nothing To Do But Wait. It Is Always Like This For Naturalists, And For Poets--the Long Hours Of Travel And Preparation, And Then The Longer Hours Of Waiting. All For That One Electric, Pulse-revving Vision When The Universe Suddenly Declares Itself.

Flying Has Changed How We Imagine Our Planet, Which We Have Seen Whole From Space, So That Even The Farthest Nations Are Ecological Neighbors. It Has Changed Our Ideas About Time. When You Can Gird The Earth At 1,000 M.p.h., How Can You Endure The Tardiness Of A Plumber? Most Of All, Flying Has Changed Our Sense Of Our Body, The Personal Space In Which We Live, Now Elastic And Swift. I Could Be In Bombay For Afternoon Tea If I Wished. My Body Isn't Limited By Its Own Weaknesses; It Can Rush Through Space.

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

The Daftest Logic Brings Such Sweet Unrest.

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

... Love Is An Act Of Sedition, A Revolt Against Reason, An Uprising In The Body Politic, A Private Mutiny.

Fear Is Danger To Your Body, But Disgust Is Danger To Your Soul.

Love Is The Most Important Thing In Our Lives, A Passion For Which We Would Fight Or Die, And Yet We're Reluctant To Linger Over Its Names. Without A Supple Vocabulary, We Can't Even Talk Or Think About It Directly.

The Brain Is Only Three Pounds Of Blood, Dream, And Electricity, And Yet From That Mortal Stew Come Beethoven's Sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's Jazz. Audrey Hepburn's Wish To Spend The Last Month Of Her Life In Somalia, Saving Children.

Nature Neither Gives Nor Expects Mercy.

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.

I'm Sure Civilizations Will Still Evolve Through Play, Or Rather As Play, Since That Seems To Be A Fundamental Mechanism Of Our Humanity.

We Tend To Think Of Memories As Monuments We Once Forged And May Find Intact Beneath The Weedy Growth Of Years. But, In A Real Sense, Memories Are Tied To And Describe The Present. Formed In An Idiosyncratic Way When They Happened, They're Also True To The Moment Of Recall, Including How You Feel, All You've Experienced, And New Values, Passions, And Vulnerability. One Never Steps Into The Same Stream Of Consciousness Twice.

Which Is Crueler, An Old Man's Lost Memories Of A Life Lived, Or A Young Man's Lost Memories Of The Life He Meant To Live?

Shaped A Little Like A Loaf Of French Country Bread, Our Brain Is A Crowded Chemistry Lab, Bustling With Nonstop Neural Conversations.imagine The Brain, That Shiny Mound Of Being, That Mouse-gray Parliament Of Cells, That Dream Factory, That Petit Tyrant Inside A Ball Of Bone, That Huddle Of Neurons Calling All The Plays, That Little Everywhere, That Fickle Pleasuredome, That Wrinkled Wardrobe Of Selves Stuffed Into The Skull Like Too Many Clothes Into A Gym Bag.

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're Dabbling In Eugenics All The Time, Breeding Ideal Crops To Replace Less Aesthetic Or Nutritious Or Hardy Varieties; Leveling Forests To Graze Cattle Or Erect Shopping Malls And Condos; Planting Groves Of A Few Familiar Trees That Homeowners And Industries Prefer.

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.

Horses Have Made Civilization Possible.

Smell Is The Mute Sense, The One Without Words.

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

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

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.

I Swear I Will Not Dishonor My Soul With Hatred, But Offer Myself Humbly As A Guardian Of Nature, As A Healer Of Misery, As A Messenger Of Wonder, As An Architect Of Peace.

We Evolved As Creatures Knitted Into The Fabric Of Nature, And Without Its Intimate Truths, We Can Find Ourselves Unraveling.

Our Relationship With Nature Has Changed Radically, Irreversibly, But By No Means All For The Bad. Our New Epoch Is Laced With Invention. Our Mistakes Are Legion, But Our Talent Is Immeasurable.

Human Beings Are Sloshing Sacks Of Chemicals On The Move.

We Humans Are Obsessed With Lights...perhaps It Is Our Way Of Hurling The Constellations Back At The Sky.

Artificial Intelligence Is Growing Up Fast, As Are Robots Whose Facial Expressions Can Elicit Empathy And Make Your Mirror Neurons Quiver.

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

I Believe Consciousness Is Brazenly Physical, A Raucous Mirage The Brain Creates To Help Us Survive.

Look In The Mirror. The Face That Pins You With Its Double Gaze Reveals A Chastening Secret. You Are Looking Into A Predator's Eyes. Most Predators Have Eyes Set Right On The Front Of Their Heads, So They Can Use Binocular Vision To Sight And Track Their Prey.

Variety Is The Pledge That Matter Makes To Living Things.

What Would Dawn Have Been Like, Had You Awakened? It Would Have Sung Through Your Bones. All I Can Do This Morning Is Let It Sing Through Mine.

Things That Live By Night Live Outside The Realm Of 'normal' Time And So Suggest Living Outside The Realm Of Good And Evil, Since We Have Moralistic Feelings About Time. Chauvinistic About Our Human Need To Wake By Day And Sleep By Night, We Come To Associate Night Dwellers With People Up To No Good At A Time When They Have The Jump On The Rest Of Us And Are Defying Nature, Defying Their Circadian Rhythms.

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.

Devising A Vocabulary For Gardening Is Like Devising A Vocabulary For Sex. There Are The Correct Latin Names, But Most People Invent Euphemisms. Those Who Refer To Plants By Latin Name Are Considered More Expert, If A Little Pedantic.

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.

After All, Coffee Is Bitter, A Flavor From The Forbidden And Dangerous Realm.

Poetry Had Everything To Teach Me About Life.

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

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.

The Senses Don't Just Make Sense Of Life In Bold Or Subtle Acts Of Clarity, They Tear Reality Apart Into Vibrant Morsels And Reassemble Them Into A Meaningful Pattern.

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