A comprehensive list of all that I enjoyed in this book:

1. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

2. I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. […] I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

3. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

4. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

5. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.

6. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

7. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. […] We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

8. I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.

9. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

10. Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.

A dissatisfactory read on the whole; even reading it in the forests of Himachal did not help. I wonder what a contemporary or edited version would look like.

PS: Beans!

Thoughts thunder off the cliffs of confusion. The waves of weariness ebb and flow.

Focus, so desperately sought, escapes like sand from a tightening fist.

As the borders of procrastination and ennui conflate, the precarious balance between action and overwhelm teeters, threatening collapse. Thoughts divide and multiply into a rising crescendo.

Suddenly—

silence.

Cosmology

When we met, the world expanded and it also contracted: it stretched large enough for the two of us—a whole universe—and it left everything else behind a curtain.

Anthropology

I’d come looking for a list of specimens […]. The children that came to the center wore sneakers and had cell phones. They listened to the same pop songs as the rest of the world.

Intimacy

I wished she would ask me for things more often. This was what I had in mind when I imagined growing native to a place-this sense that I was needed in someone else’s life.

The Mirror

I didn’t quite know where my life began and how far it extended. I didn’t want to risk cutting off any vital parts.

Life and Death

All this time, we were waiting. […] We lived with the imaginary shock. Maybe, I thought, it would also be a relief: Here it was, finally. Here was life itself.

This was a wonderful read.

Resolution
Train long gone

The first time I saw Tool perform was when I realised how tight a live show really could be (Opeth is a very close second).

So naturally when I saw that Puscifer would be playing in a few days I was intrigued. Life events and same-day tickets made the decision. And what a great decision it was.

It was like watching a play. No phones (although I wish I’d taken my film camera). The whole show was so clean. The lighting was fantastic.

Normal isn’t
Forgetting doesn’t
Soothing hasn’t
Footing and balance ravaged

Oh serenity
Tranquility

I even took out my earplugs.

Restoration
–Puscifer: Normal Isn’t

PS: Best trilogy ever?