Here on this island...

[...] Here there is time; time to be quiet; time to work without pressure; time to think; time to watch the heron, watching with frozen patience for his prey. Time to look at the stars or to study a shell; time to see friends, to gossip, to laugh, to talk. Time, even, not to talk. At home, when I meet my friends in those cubby-holed hours, time is so precious we feel we must cram every available instant with conversation. We cannot afford the luxury of silence. Here on the island I find I can sit with a friend without talking, sharing the day's last sliver of pale green light on the horizon, or the whorls in a small white shell, or the dark scar left in a dazzling night sky by a shooting star. Then communication becomes communion and one is nourished as one never is by words.

Anne Morrow Lindberg, Gift from the Sea, p115-116 (Vintage Books, March 1978)

...

"When you allow yourself to pause for a moment - in that uncomfortable feeling of boredom, almost like tasting it - something happens, something new opens up, something new is created. That is where creativity lives, if anywhere - in the midst of boredom and the ordinary."

Sanna Vaara

How to Celebrate a Quiet Life - Daily Life in Finland

Belonging - to the land

In the days of the white settlement the natives of North America found ownership of land an incomprehensible concept. And so they lost it when the Europeans made them sign pieces of paper that were equally incomprehensible to them. They felt they belonged to the land, but the land did not belong to them. [emphasis added]

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p44 (Penguin Books 2009)

on competition

[...] I don't really get any pleasure out of beating other people. I agree that it's right and proper to do the best you can in a race, but this desire to beat everyone else is another matter altogether. So on competitive occasions like school sports days, the pleasure I get just by being there takes over, and I'll end up running the race with all the urgency of someone skipping his way across a meadow.
Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism, Q44 p118 (Sceptre 2014), translated by David Mitchell & Keiko Yoshida

'Antarctica has no government as such'

W. Herzog about filming Encounters at the End of the World

The film benefited greatly from the spirit of the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961 and which I consider to be one of the finest documents of the civilised world. It banned military activity on the continent and established the area as a scientific preserve, committing an entire landmass to the principles of peace and knowledge. There is also an unequivocal ban on nuclear testing or dumping of radioactive waste. The treaty is one of the most potent manifestations of civilised behaviour among nations in modern history. I remember a time when at least a dozen countries claimed segments of the continent as their national territory, but Antarctica has no government as such; it belongs to no one, and while making the film I was witness to the extraordinary international co-operation you find there.
[...]
The vast landscape of the continent is unique, but Encounters at the End of the World is more about the inhabitants of Antarctica than  anything else. There is a significant science being done there, which attracts a certain kind of person, and behind every door at McMurdo is an extraordinary character. With no indigenous population, no one there has anything in common other than a shared attraction to this immense, unspoilt and untouched area of the earth. Someone told me that everybody who isn't tied down falls to the bottom of the globe.
Werner Herzog, A Guide for the Perplexed, Conversations with Paul Cronin, p385-386 (Faber & Faber 2014)

The tenderness of life...

"[...] 

The tenderness of life is preserved on islands of temporary calm. And today I find that a rather daring, albeit inexplicable, thought. [...] "

Excerpt from the war diary of
Yevgenia Belorusets, www.isolarii.com/kyiv: Islands of Temporary Calm, Tuesday, March 29, day 34

'Yevgenia Belorusets has been one of the great documentarians of Russia’s war against Ukraine since 2014, winning the International Literature Prize for her work. Her diary provides the news from a different vantage.' 

German (Der Spiegel)

'Ehrgeiz'

"Ganz ohne Ehrgeiz wird es wohl nicht gehen. Wobei ich nicht sagen kann, wo sich die Freude an der Tätigkeit und der Ehrgeiz zu unter­scheiden beginnen, zumal in meinem Falle Ehrgeiz nur bedingt notwendig war. Mein Ehrgeiz bestand darin, die jeweilige Aufgabe vernünftig zu bewältigen, und das hat bisher zu einem ziemlich schnellen Aufstieg geführt, der mich eher ängstigt."

Angela Merkel, Zitat aus einem Artikel der DW: Herlinde Koelbls Porträts von Angela Merkel

like the Aurignacian hunter

In his first summer, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for near an hour in his sandbox in the orchard, as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying, birdsong and sweet smell of privet and rose. The child was not observing; he was at rest in the very centre of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginnings, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through.

Ecstasy is identity with all existence, and ecstacy showed in his bright paintings; like the Aurignacian hunter, who became the deer he drew on the cave wall, there was no "self" to separate him from the bird or flower. The same spontaneous identity with the object is achieved in the bold sumi paintings of Japan -- a strong expression of Zen culture, since to become one with whatever one does is a true realization of the Way.

Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters from free-swimming life into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came.
Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (1979), p47 (Harvill HarperCollins 1989)

Quotes

"N'espere rien de l'homme s'il travaille pour sa propre vie et non pour son eternite."— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Goodreads Quotes

scanning

There is a funny thing about human consciousness [...] which is that our attention is captured by the figure rather than the background, by the relatively enclosed area rather than the diffuse area, and by something moving rather than what is relatively still. And to all those phenomena that—in this way—attract our attention, we attribute a higher degree of reality than the ones we don’t notice. That’s only because, for the moment, those are more important to us. Consciousness [...] is a radar that is scanning the environment to look out for trouble just in the same way as a ship’s radar is looking for rocks or other ships. And the radar, therefore, does not notice the vast areas of space where there are no rocks, no other ships. So, in the same way, our eyes—or rather, the selective consciousness behind the eyes—only pays attention to what we think is important.

Alan Watts: We as Organism

little gaps of solitude and silence

[...] "we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. [...]  the challenge is to search for “little gaps of solitude and silence in which [to] find … the rare, and even rarer thing that might be worth saying”. Gilles Deleuze (Pourparlers / Negotiations)

from an article about Jenny Odell

Große Wasser

An einem großen Wasser fühlt man sich freier als sonst, einfach nur, weil das große Wasser da ist. Das große Wasser verscheucht die ewigen kleinen Gedanken und das Drandenken an dies und das und sagt einem, dass man einmal still und ruhig werden soll. Man wird plötzlich ganz "spiegelglatt", ich meine im Innern. Und man atmet ganz ruhig und spürt die Luft vom Wasser her, wie sie das Gesicht kühlt und dafür sorgt, dass die Sonne sich einbrennen kann in das Gesicht. 

Ortheil, Die Berlinreise, p 109 (Luchterhand 2014)

Klang der Sprache

Das Französische klingt weich und sanft wie im Traum geflüstert. Das Sprechen verläuft ohne Pause und Hänger, und die Französisch Sprechenden geraten, je länger sie sprechen, immer tiefer hinein in den Traum. Im Traum ist es aber nicht dunkel oder gefährlich, sondern hell, wie im Frühling oder im Herbst, keineswegs aber wie im Sommer oder im Winter.   

Ortheil, Die Berlinreise, p 103 (Luchterhand 2014)

nature

[...] Just by looking at nature, I feel as if I'm being swallowed up into it, and in that moment I get the sensation that my body's now a speck, a speck from long before I was born, a speck that is melting into nature herself. This sensation is so amazing that I forget that I'm a human being, and one with special needs to boot.

Nature calms me down when I'm furious, and laughs with me when I'm happy. You may think that it's not possible that nature could be a friend, not really. But human beings are part of the animal kingdom too, and perhaps us people with autism still have some left over awareness of this, buried somewhere deep down. I'll always cherish the part of me that thinks of nature as a friend.
Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism, Q47 p123, (Sceptre 2014), translated by David Mitchell & Keiko Yoshida

snowed in & a thread of stories

One thing that my mother once told me was that I fell quite ill when I was five or six. We could not call an ambulance because even if we did manage to get hold of one, we were too deeply snowed in. So my mother wrapped me in blankets, tied me on a sled and pulled me all night to Aschau where I was admitted to hospital. She visited me eight days later, coming on foot through deep snow. I do not remember this, but she was so amazed that I was absolutely without complaint. Apparently I had pulled a single piece of thread from my blanket on the bed and for eight days had played with it. I was not bored: this thread was full of stories and fantasies for me.
Werner Herzog, A Guide for the Perplexed, Conversations with Paul Cronin, p12-13 (Faber & Faber 2014)

the "normal" paradox

[...] I think in many ways that we autistic are the normal ones, and the rest of the people are pretty strange [...] 
Greta Thunberg, TEDxStockholm, 2:34

The Importance of Traveling on Foot

For two long we have been estranged from essential nomadic life. Humans aren't made to sit in front of computer screens or travel by aeroplane; nature intended something different for us. Walking great distances has never been extreme behaviour to me. It has forever helped me regain my equilibrium, and I would always rather do the existentially important things in my life on foot. If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn't be right at such a moment. Making a journey like that on foot has nothing to do with being a tourist; you won't find many of them carrying binoculars, a canteen, a compass and a penknife but no camera on their travels. In fact, the dignity and identity of cultures around the world are being stripped to the bone by tourism. I have a dictum that connected me instantly with Bruce Chatwin: "Tourism is sin and travel by foot is virtue."
Werner Herzog, A Guide for the Perplexed, Conversations with Paul Cronin, p254 (Faber & Faber 2014)
More on traveling on foot [link to g-book]

maelstrom

One night in 1945, on a Navy vessel in Pacific storm, my relief on bow watch, seasick, failed to appear, and I was alone for eight hours in a maelstrom of wind and water, noise and iron; again and again, waves crashed across the deck, until water, air, and iron became one. Overwhelmed, exhausted, all thought and emotion beaten out of me, I lost my sense of self, the heartbeat I heard was the heart of the world, I breathed with the mighty risings and declines of earth, and this evanescence seemed less frightening then exalting. Afterwards, there was a pain of loss - loss of what, I wondered, understanding nothing.
Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (1979), p48 (Harvill HarperCollins 1989)

'that distant, watery past'

We just want to go back. To the distant, distant past. To a primeval era, in fact, before human beings existed. All people with autism feel the same about this one, I reckon. Aquatic life-forms came into being and evolved, but why did they then have to emerge onto dry land, and turn into human beings who chose to lead lives ruled by time? These are real mysteries to me.

In the water it's so quiet and I'm so free and happy there. Nobody hassles us in the water, and it's as if we've got all the time in the world. Whether we stay in one place or whether we're swimming about, when we're in the water we can really be at one with the pulse of time. Outside of the water there's always too much stimulation for our eyes and our ears, and it's impossible for us to guess how long one second is or how long an hour takes.

People with autism have no freedom. The reason is that we are a different kind of human, born with primeval senses. We are outside the normal flow of time, we can't express ourselves, and our bodies are hurtling us through life. If only we could go back to that distant, distant, watery past - then we'd all be able to live as contentedly and as freely as you lot!
Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism, Q39 p104-105 (Sceptre 2014), translated by David Mitchell & Keiko Yoshida

'the armour of the I'

Compare the wild, free paintings of the child with the stiff, pinched "pictures" these become as the painter notices the painting and tries to portray "reality" as others see it; self-conscious now, he steps out of his own painting and, finding himself apart from things, notices the silence all around and becomes alarmed by the vast signification of Creation. The armour of the "I" begins to form, the construction and desperate assertion of separate identity, the loneliness: "Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern." William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

[...] memories would come on wings of light [...]
Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (1979), p47 (Harvill HarperCollins 1989)