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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.

-Diane Ackerman

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When You Consider Something

Diane Ackerman

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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

Humans Are The Most Successful Invasives Of All Time.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Touch Seems To Be As Essential As Sunlight.

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

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

Horses Have Made Civilization Possible.

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

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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.

The Daftest Logic Brings Such Sweet Unrest.

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

Love Is Like A Batik Created From Many Emotional Colors, It Is A Fabric Whose Pattern And Brightness May Vary.

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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.

Disassociating, Mindfulness, Transcendence-whatever The Label-it's A Sort Of Loophole In Our Contract With Reality, A Form Of Self-rescue.

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.

Shaped A Little Like A Loaf Of French Country Bread, Our Brain Is A Crowded Chemistry Lab, Bustling With Nonstop Neural Conversations.

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.

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Poetry Had Everything To Teach Me About Life.

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

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

Nature Neither Gives Nor Expects Mercy.

Human Beings Are Sloshing Sacks Of Chemicals On The Move.

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

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

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.

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

Knowing Who You Are

For The Longest Time I Didn't Realize I Was Creative - I Just Thought I Was Strange.

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

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

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

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.

Writing Is My Form Of Celebration And Prayer.

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

A Flower's Fragrance Declares To All The World That It Is Fertile, Available, And Desirable, Its Sex Organs Oozing With Nectar. Its Smell Reminds Us In Vestigial Ways Of Fertility, Vigor, Life-force, All The Optimism, Expectancy, And Passionate Bloom Of Youth. We Inhale Its Ardent Aroma And, No Matter What Our Ages, We Feel Young And Nubile In A World Aflame With Desire.

What Do Those Of Us Who Aren't Tall, Flawlessly Sculpted Adolescents Do? Answer: Console Ourselves With How Relative Beauty Can Be... Thank Heavens For The Arousing Qualities Of Zest, Intelligence, Wit, Curiosity, Sweetness, Passion, Talent And Grace.

History Is An Agreed-upon Fiction.

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.

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

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

A Kiss Is Like Singing Into Someone's Mouth.

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.

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

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

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.

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Choice Is A Signature Of Our Species.

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

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.

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.

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.

For Better Or Worse, Zoos Are How Most People Come To Know Big Or Exotic Animals. Few Will Ever See Wild Penguins Sledding Downhill To Sea On Their Bellies, Giant Pandas Holding Bamboo Lollipops In China Or Tree Porcupines In The Canadian Rockies, Balled Up Like Giant Pine Cones.

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

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

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.

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.

We Are Defined By How We Place Our Attention.

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.

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.

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.

No Matter How Politely One Says It, We Owe Our Existence To The Farts Of Blue-green Algae.

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?

My Mother Always Said I Must Be Part Mongolian Because Of My Lotus-pale Complexion And Squid-ink Black Hair.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We Live On The Leash Of Our Senses.

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

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.

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.

Culture Is What People Invent When They Have Lost Nature.

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

Couples Are Jigsaw Puzzles That Hang Together By Touching In Just Enough Points.

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.

Life Becomes A Lot Simpler For A Creative Person When He Or She Finds The Routine That Works Best. ... Get In The Habit Of Going Through The Routine Every Day, And On Some Of Those Days, You're Going To Be Lucky And Have Done Some Good Work. ... Go To Your Study, Close The Door, Invent Your Confidence.

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

I Watched Her Face Switch Among The Radio Stations Of Memory

Love Is The White Light Of Emotion.

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.

There Is A Furnace In Our Cells, And When We Breathe We Pass The World Through Our Bodies, Brew It Lightly, And Turn It Loose Again, Gently Altered For Having Known Us.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

Home Is Where The Heart Is

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.

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

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

[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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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