finding the way..........

 

My senses and faculties help me to find the way from here to Killarney but on the way back to God they bewilder and impede me.

-John Moriarty, A Hut at the Edge of the Village

senses......................

 

     And contemplation, I come to see, does not in any case mean closing your eyes so much as opening them, to the glory of everything around you.  Coming to your senses, by getting out of your head.

-Pico Iyer,  Aflame: Learning from Silence

I would guess that......................

 

...............................this is true.

On the essence of identity............

 But when meaning has been disciplined out of language, and the pride of doing something better than other people banished, and the superficial clarity of being a man or a woman prohibited, and the practical instinct of protection and of self-protection disallowed, and life’s simple practices shamed out of existence—when all these timeless human things, all created out of the senses, melt into air, then nothing in our experience will remind us of anything else in our experience, and we will lose the ability to discriminate, to cherish, to judge. Instead of continually expanding our sympathies by helping us to follow the thread of truth through dissimilarity, the moral imagination will shrink to nothing. And then any comparison, and any equivalence, is possible.

-Lee Siegel, from this post

the synesthetic approach...................

      His instinctive approach to the library was synesthetic:  books were sensed by smell and look and touch, and only then could the reading process be contemplated.  It was only natural, therefore, that the chosen book's characters would come alive for him through all his senses: "quite suddenly, a man or a woman or a child leapt off the page and stood there with you in the immense silence.  Then you sat with them for an hour and ran with them and laughed and wept with them."  In this way his lifelong love of literature began.  His enthusiasm for adaptation and for breaking down genre barriers has its roots in this same crossing of sensations; to "see" the book, to "read" the movie, and to "hear" the staged play have always been natural extensions of the traditional forms for Bradbury.  This openness to all the possibilities of a creative idea was formed at an early age, and the gift proved to be both a blessing and a frustration as Bradbury extended his storytelling genius into other genres and media forms.

-Jonathan R. Eller, Becoming Ray Bradbury

A sign of the times......................?

via

Mad skills....................

"It is a skill to hear the unsaid and to see the unseen..."

-Michael Wade

Pondering...........................

courtesy of the wondrous Thrive 

The periodic table of the heart.......

On the periodic table of the heart, somewhere between wonderon and unattainium, lies presence, which one doesn't so much take as steep in, like a romance, and without which one can live just fine, but not thrive.  Those sensory bridges need to stay sharp, not just for our physical survival, but so we feel fully engaged and alive.

-Diane Ackerman,  The Human Age:  The World Shaped by Us

Morphed........................

     What about us?  Are we natural anymore?  How can we be, when we've morphed into superheroes?  Our ancestors adapted to nature according to the limits of their senses.  But over the eons, by extending our senses through clever inventions - language, writing, books, tools, telescopes, telephones, eyeglasses, cars, planes, rocket ships - we've changed how we engage the world and also how we think of ourselves.  We just assume now that human beings can move across the skies at 500 mph.  Or spot a hawk across a valley.  Or do colossal calculations at speed.  Or watch events unfolding halfway around the world.  Or safely repair someone's heart.  Or wage war.  Our attitude about our own nature, what sort of creatures we are, now includes the novelties we've pinned to our senses.

-Diane Ackerman,  The Human Age:  The World Shaped By Us

Leading from the Heartland.................

So let’s talk about this “Reality” thing a little more.

Some people would say that only what you can tangibly sense is real … if you cannot see, smell, touch, hear, or taste something, it does not really exist.  Well, there goes most of the useful expressions of human emotion and existence.  Yes, you can hear an angry tone in someone’s voice or see their face get red, but you cannot tangibly sense the underlying emotion … you only get the symptoms.

KNOWING SOMEONE IS ANGRY IS NOT THE SAME AS UNDERSTANDING WHY THEY FEEL THAT ANGER …

Any approach which leaves out the emotional side of life seems incomplete.

-John E. Smith, as excerpted from here

It is the simple things............................

Michael Wade suggests we pay attention to where real pleasure lies.  Culled from his list:

"A visit from a noble dog. Shakespeare. Dickens. The feeling of achievement. The discovery of a solution. Diana Rigg. An evening breeze. The flag flapping in the wind. Jig-saw puzzles"

I'd add a few more:  the taste of a chocolate-chip cookie still warm from the oven, the smell of bacon frying, the first magnolia blooms of the Spring, the feel of a fly ball settling into a well-worn baseball glove, the sound of the kitty's purr, a perfectly thrown frisbee.   Add some of your own, it's fun.

Magic...............................................

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” 
-William Butler Yeats

photo via

Thankfully....................................................

“The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” 
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Good news and welcome back......................

It appears that Scott is blogging regularly again.  Do go visit.

via

Why scientists often garner disrespect......

     "As far as biological cause and effect are concerned," Pinker wrote in The Language Instinct, "music is useless.  It shows no sign of design for attaining a goal such as long life, or grandchildren, or accurate perception and prediction of the world.  Compared with language, vision, social reasoning, and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged."
-an excerpt from This Is Your Brain on Music

I beg to disagree.

Opportunities.................

"Unplanned opportunities may be your best chance of creating a great strategy so you need to be constantly looking for them. Evidence supports the idea that the most successful entrepreneurs and leaders are fantastic at noticing opportunities. And the greatest opportunities come from reactions to unplanned events."
-Max McKeown

The original instructor............

Close observation of a single subject, whether it is as small as Pasteur's microbes or as great as Einstein's universe, is the kind of work that happens less and less these days.  Glued to computer and TV screens, we have forgotten how to look at the natural world, the original instructor on how to be curious about detail.
-Jennifer New
as excerpted from How To Be An Explorer of the World

photo courtesy of mmescherzo

On reading the "tells"................

Seven wonders...........

The opening prayer at yesterday's Rotary meeting spoke to the
Seven Wonders.  Not the Colossus at Rhodes, nor the Hanging
Gardens of Babylon,  and not even the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Nope, we have been given the seven wonders of smelling, seeing,
hearing, feeling, tasting, laughing, and healing.   May we use these
powers with awareness and appreciate the gift with a spirit of
gratitude.    Can I get an Amen?

photo courtesy of