1997


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Watching bulbous, sodden clouds, those dark sailors of the heavy sky,
brush the snowy, veined mountain-tops and shroud the grey landscape
below in dancing shadows and veils of wetness.
      -- journal, 1993

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It would have been more prudent to leave the day before.  Yes, well it
would have been prudent to stay at home.  You have to let things go
their own way, or why be here at all.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels

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All the way I was saying goodbye.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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Extreme situations always seem absurd until they happen.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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Does it rain because you carry your umbrella, or because you don’t?
It’s a personal matter depending on how you remember it.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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There had been no awkwardness, no break even in the mood.  The episode
had seemed quite natural.  It went one way, could as easily have gone
another.  I sat up with my back against a pillar and smoked another
cigarette, lost in the mystery of it.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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Thoreau: “We are in a great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph
from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing
important to communicate.”  If Thoreau were alive today he would find
full confirmation of his fears.  Instant information is instantly
obsolete.  Only the most banal ideas can successfully cross great
distances at the speed of light. And anything that travels very far
very fast is scarcely worth transporting, especially the tourist.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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I am learning, as I make my way through my first continent, that it is
remarkably easy to do things, and much more frightening to contemplate
them.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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For me this is a landscape and a time to bank up courage in a craven
heart, to carry a greater fund of joy into the next cloud of sorrow,
to learn even to love the sorrow for the pleasure it divides, like the
black notes of a keyboard, or hunger between meals.  Perhaps even to
discover that pain and pleasure, since they cannot exist without each
other, are really the same thing.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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Like all strong prejudices they not only prepared me for the
worst. They paved the way.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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... I felt myself to be the most privileged person on the earth to be
able to pass through where others saw only normality, and to think
myself in paradise.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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… thier happiness had an unusual clarity and depth, like a clear pool,
that invited others to jump in and share.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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[the monkeys] seemed so close to enlightenment, as though at any
moment they might stumble over it and explode into consciousness.
They experiment with any familiar object ... just as a human baby does
… And nothing comes of it.  To be so close, yet never pierce the veil!
I looked at myself in the same light, as a monkey given my life to
play with, prodding it, trying to stretch it into different shapes,
dropping it and picking it up again, suspecting always that it must
have some use and meaning, tantalized and frustrated by it but unable
to make sense of it.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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The vital instrument of change is detachment and travelling alone was
an immense advantage.  At a time of change the two aspects of a person
exist simultaneously; and with a caterpillar turning into a butterfly
there is the image of what you were and the image of what you are
about to be, but those who know you well see you only as you were.
They are unwilling to recognize change.  By their actions they will
try to draw you back into your familiar ways.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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The truth obviously does not reveal itself unaided to humans.  It has
to be uncovered by an effort of consciousness.  Or more likely, it
exists only in human consciousness.  Without man around to recognize
it there is no truth, no God.
      --  Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels
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I smiled to myself at the sight of this money, ‘O drug’ said I aloud,
‘what art thou good for?  Thou are not worth to me to me, no, not the
taking off of the ground; one of those knives is worth all this heap;
I have no manner of use for thee, e’en remain where thou art, and go
to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving.’  However,
upon second thoughts, I took it away ...
     -- Robinson Crusoe

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There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on
a mountain trail knowing that everything you need is on your back.  It
is a confidence in having left all inessentials behind and of entering
a world of natural beauty which has not been violated, where money has
no value, and possessions are a deadweight.  The person with the
fewest possessions is the freest: Thoreau was right.
       -- Paul Theroux

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From what I have said of the natives of New Holland they may appear to
be some of the most wretched people on earth.  But in reality they are
far happier than we Europeans, being wholly unacquainted not only with
the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are
happy in not knowing the use of them.  They live in Tranquility.  The
Earth and the Sea of their own accord furnish them with all things
necessary in life.
	  -- Captain Cook

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And it is a profound consolation, perhaps the only one, to this
haunted animal that wastes most of a long and ghostly life wandering
the future and the past on its hind legs, looking for meanings, only
to see in the eyes of others of its kind that it must die.

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Whatever this man is - wanderer or evil monk, or saint or sorcerer -
he seems touched by what Tibetans call the “crazy wisdom”: he is free.
   -- Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
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All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end,
which is sorrow: acquisistions end in dispersion, buildings end in
destruction; meetings, in separation; births, in death.  Knowing this,
one should from the very first renounce acquisition and heaping-up,
and building and meeting, and … set about realizing the Truth … Life
is short, and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourselves to
meditation ... “
	   -- Milarepa

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You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself flows in your
veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the
stars ...

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When you are ready, the teacher will appear.
     -- Buddhism (from Peter Matthiessen)

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... Followers of trails and of seasons, breakers of camp in the little
dawn wind, seekers of watercourses over the wrinkled rind of the
world, o seekers, o finders of reasons to be up and gone ...”
       -- Saint John Perse

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It was at that moment that I realized that while it is possible to
love two people at the same time, in different ways, in the heart, it
is not possible to do so in the world.
       -- David Leavitt

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Playfully, absently, without even giving thought to repercussions, she
spoke right back to him.  A conversation above the spoken words,
beyond their meanings.  Some folk call it chemistry, some call it
lust; some call it honesty.”
      -- Randall Kenan

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My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane ...

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There’s two ways of living here now.  There’s the old way, look out
for your family, die where you was born, fish, cut your wood, keep a
garden, make do with what you got.  Then there’s the new way - Work
out, have a job, somebody tell you what to do, commute, your brother’s
in South Africa, your mother’s in Regina, buy every goddamn
cockadoodle piece of Japanese crap you can.  Leave home.  Go off to
look for work.  And some has a hard time of it.
     -- Annie Proulx, the Shipping News

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Hard for Bunny, who still measured events on a child’s scale of fair
and unfair.  
     -- Annie Proulx, the Shipping News

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How hard it must be to have to appear tougher than you are, and to go
round the stray corners of the world with people whose hearts are
shallow as far as you are concerned; and to have nothing you wish to
be or do that you will risk your life for the reaching of; and to have
a face that is pretty only for a time.

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How lucky is a stream, I thought as I lay idly, that has no need to
repeat its rounds over the same ground like most of us, looking for
something it never finds, but knows its way, and eats through the
hills that impede it.

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A very small boy came to drive away the black cows grazing at a
distance.  Air and water and the busy grass fell silent.  In the
thickening velvet of the night the moon was soon climbing her steep
invisible stair.

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Time and change … [are] visible anywhere and could be seen every
morning as one walks to one’s office, since time and space are fluid
along Thames as along Euphrates, and everything one looks at is
transition.  But such basic facts are what the human race, as soon as
it has any initiatve at all, pathetically smothers out of sight.

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Ever since the tower of Babel was built in the first adventure against
space, people have been aware at intervals of the supremacy of Man.
It remains perhaps to be proved, but meanwhile the landscape of our
age advertises it, regretfully but with success, pushing the more
permanent background out of sight.  The mountains are there, but the
factories take the foreground, and the seaside villa intrudes before
the sea; and it is only in untamed corners that one can forget - or
possibly remember - to whom the world belongs.  The ‘underdeveloped
countries’ (the arrogance of this term was almost incredible) - those
poor underdeveloped countries may console themselves with the
reflection that no great religion was ever born in a landscape whose
foregrounds are completely occupied by men.

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The best thing about him was his wife and the best thing about his
wife was a girlfriend named Dezi Duz who did whenever she could and
had a Wac uniform that Lieutenant Scheisskopf’s wife put on every
weekend and took off every weekend for every cadet in her husband’s
squadron who wanted to creep into her.

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… then drew back the coverlet and stretched herself out luxuriously
with an expression of feline expectation.  She beckoned to him
longingly, with a husky laugh.
	   	-- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
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Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that
she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by
the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out
urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it.  She did not
understand Yossarian’s lust; but she was willing to take his word for
it.
	   	-- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
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… beckoned him into bed beside her with that look of simpering idiocy
of a woman in heat.
	   	-- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
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Nately had gone clear out of his mind.  He wanted them all to fall in
love right away and get married ... Nately saw it all very clearly.
Love had transmogrified him into a romantic idiot.
	   	-- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
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It was easy to read the message in his entrails.  Man was matter, that
was Snowden’s secret.  Drop him out a window and he’ll fall.  Set fire
to him and he’ll burn.  Bury him and he’ll rot like other kinds of
garbage.  The spirit gone, man is garbage.  That was Snowden’s secret.
	   	-- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
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... And with his ear to the reed-stems he caught, at intervals,
something of what the wind went whispering so constantly among them.
	  -- The Wind in the Willows
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Conversation was impossible for a long time; and when it was slowly
resumed, it was that regrettable sort of conversation that results
from talking with your mouth full.
	  -- The Wind in the Willows
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But it was good to think he had this place to come back to, this place
which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him
again, and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.
	  -- The Wind in the Willows
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To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat
behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys,
watch, matches, pencil-case - all that makes life worth living, all
that distinguished the many-pocketed from the no-pocketed productions
that hop or trip about permissively, unequipped for the real contest.
	  -- The Wind in the Willows
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It is all very well, when you have a light heart, and a clear
conscience, and money in your pocket, and nobody scouring the country
for you to drag you off to prison again, to follow where the road
beckons and points, not caring wither.
	  -- The Wind in the Willows
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The Mole was a good listener, and Toad, with no one to check his
statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself
go.  Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the
category of
hwat-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of-ten-minutes-afterwards.
Those are always the best and raciest adventures: and why should they
not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that
really come off?
	  -- The Wind in the Willows
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I remember the old doctor, ‘It would be interesting to watch the
mental changes of individuals on the spot.’  I felt I was becoming
scientifically interesting.
	       -- Joseph Conrad

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Perhaps I had a little fever, too.  One can’t live with one’s finger
everlastingly on one’s pulse.  I had often ‘a little fever,’ or a
little touch of other things - the playful paw-strokes of the
wilderness, the preliminary trifling before the more serious onslaught
which came in due course.
	       -- Joseph Conrad
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There was no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale that was
not so much told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations,
completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep
sighs.
	       -- Joseph Conrad
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It was enough, when you thought it over, to give you the idea of an
immense, potent, and invisible hand thrust into the ant-heap of the
earth, laying hold of shoulders, knocking heads together, and setting
the unconscious faces of the multitude towards inconceivable goals and
in undreamt-of directions.
	       -- Joseph Conrad
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The seamen were glad to get back into the alleyway.  Secretly each of
them thought at the last moment he could rush out on deck - and that
was a comfort.  There is something horribly repugnant in the idea of
being drowned under a deck.
	       -- Joseph Conrad
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There was an aneroid glass screwed above the couch.  He turned that
way, struck another match, and discovered the white face of the other
instrument looking at him from the bulkhead, meaningly, not to be
gain-said, as though the wisdom of men were made unerring by the
indifference of matter.
	       -- Joseph Conrad
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He [put the box of matches back] now, but before he removed his hand
it occurred to him that perhaps he would never have occasion to use
that box anymore.  The vividness of the thought checked him and for an
infinitesimal fraction of a second his fingers closed again on the
small object as though it had been the symbol of all these little
habits that chain us to the weary round of life.  He released it at
last, and letting himself fall on the settee, listened for the first
sounds of returning wind.
	       -- Joseph Conrad
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Environmentalists, naturalists, and conservationists are often asked
to defend their concerns for the well-being of other species of living
things besides man.  The question is, ‘what good are they?’ meaning,
of course, what good are they to man, because if one asked what good
they were to the planet, one could just as legitimately ask the same
question about mankind.
	       -- the View from Great Gull

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We are frightened by the power of nature, discomfited by the weather,
confused by the unpredictable in our environment; we want to live more
comfortably, to enjoy life more and enjoy it longer, to travel faster
and more safely.  So we invent and construct things that have the
effect of putting bulwarks and distances between ourselves and the
earth.  This gives us a feeling of safety, of mastery over nature, and
that feeling tends to separate us spiritually and psychologically from
our roots.

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Now fewer and fewer men, using bigger and bigger machines and
increasing amounts of chemicals, supply food for more and more people;
another force thrusting man away from the reality of the planet -
particularly in those nations that have the greatest impact on the
planet.

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‘Free as a bird’ is an expression in which a bird might find ironical
amusement, especially as coming from man, the only animal who has, in
his individual life, succeeded in achieving some measure of
independence from the discipline of nature.
	     -- Louis J Halle, Jr.

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The cultural upcurve in society hasn’t kept pace with the
technological upcurve … our spiritual relation to the planet is not
yet scarcely so so sophisticated as our mechanical relation.

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... nibble at the edges of the unknown ...

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There has been in recent years excessive emphasis on a citizen’s
rights, and inadequate stress upon his duties and responsibilities.
	-- Paxton Blair

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Animals, because they lack opposable thumbs, carry things in their
mouths.  Animals release their possessions because it’s too difficult
to carry them, and so there isn’t any temptation to accumulate.  Being
able to grasp leads inevitably and naturally to being able to hold and
then to being able to keep.  And so humans like me fill our holes with
what attracts us, and animals continue to be, as they have been for
generations, unfettered.

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