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"Imagine a world in which there is no time. Only images."
(Alan Lightman, "Einstein's Dreams")

"To take a photograph is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.

Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt. . . ."

'we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle — we used to call him Tortoise —'
'Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked.
'We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily: 'really you are very dull!'
'You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon.
'I only took the regular course.'
'What was that?' inquired Alice.

'Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied;
'and then the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'
'And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.
'Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: 'nine the next, and so on.'
'What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.
'That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they lessen from day to day.'

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
(Walt Whitman)

My loving acceptance of you helps you love and accept yourself.

My gift of affection to you comes back to me ten-fold.

My hugs and kisses and gentle touches will touch you for life.

I am thankful for the journey we will begin together.

I am honored to introduce you to the world and encourage you to join it.

Like a ray of light through water, I see your possibilities and your wondrous soul with clarity.

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

(Henry David Thoreau)

"Choices are not magic. . . . Our brains and the experiences they harbor generate our choices. . . .

The sneaky secret about choice is that it's not about choice at all--it's about value."

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

"We all live in the same time forever. There is no future and there is no past."

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

(Emily Dickenson, 1830-1886)

(Saul Steinberg, New Yorker Magazine cover, 1971)

(proverb)

There is no freedom quite like the one you give yourself.

(John Cote', Walk for Warriors)

West Is Home

The ocean is outside my window and in my soul.

It speaks to me in pounding waves of sound.

It fills my senses with colors and smells of salt and life.

I am always oriented toward it.

West is home.

I rejoice in the sight of soaring pelicans, seagulls, and cormorants.

I am lifted by the sight of a heron in flight or in the trees in my alley.

What pleasure to hear a seal, see a spout from a whale heading south, or

the occasional gift of a dolphin's fin, surfacing and disappearing.

A foghorn at night, the helicopters along the shore, the fast and dark sound of a smuggler's boat--all interest and excite me.

The sea is part of my life's experiences--as a child in the sand, a young girl

at the beach, a woman seeing infinity.

Life came from its waters--ever present, ever changing, forever in me.

The Brain--is wider than the Sky--
For--put them side by side--
The one the other will contain
With ease--and You--beside--

The Brain is deeper than the sea--
For--hold them--Blue to Blue--
The one the other will absorb--
As Sponges--Buckets--do--

The Brain is just the weight of God--
For--Heft them--Pound for Pound--
And they will differ--if they do--
As Syllable from Sound--

(Emily Dickinson, c. 1862)

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

“If it be / now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be / now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The / readiness is all.”

Oh, Buchenwald, we neither lament, nor complain,
and whatever our future may hold:
we still want to say "yes" to life,
because one day the time will come -
then we will be free!

( Buchenwaldlied (Buchenwald Song), composed by Austrian Jewish inmates Hermann Leopoldi and Dr Fritz Löhner-Beda)

"....now that he was gone,
and so was she
and no one lived there anymore,
the town kept lighting up without them
as if it were the first dusk."

(The Beatles , August 18, 1969, the last lyric on the last song they recorded.)

If you know anything that is hurtful and untrue, don't say it.
If you know anything that is helpful and untrue, don't say it.
If you know anything that is hurtful and true, don't say it.
If you know anything that is helpful and true, find the right time.