The way home

Actually, I doubt that it was "progress" that most interested [physicist] Richard [Feynman]. He was always searching for patterns, for connections, for a new way of looking at something, but I suspect his motivation was not so much to understand the world as it was to find new ideas to explain. The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else.

I remember a conversation we had a year or so before his death, walking in the hills above Pasadena. We were exploring an unfamiliar trail and Richard, recovering from a major operation for the cancer, was walking more slowly than usual. He was telling a long and funny story about how he had been reading up on his disease and surprising his doctors by predicting their diagnosis and his chances of survival. I was hearing for the first time how far his cancer had progressed, so the jokes did not seem so funny. He must have noticed my mood, because he suddenly stopped the story and asked, "Hey, what's the matter?"

I hesitated. "I'm sad because you're going to die."

"Yeah," he sighed, "that bugs me sometimes too. But not so much as you think." And after a few more steps, "When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you've told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway."

We walked along in silence for a few minutes. Then we came to a place where another trail crossed and Richard stopped to look around at the surroundings. Suddenly a grin lit up his face.

"Hey," he said, all trace of sadness forgotten, "I bet I can show you a better way home."

And so he did.

        Danny Hillis, Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine, longnow.org

Flexibility

The willow which bends to the tempest
often escapes better than the oak which resists it.

    Walter Scott, The Works of Sir Walter Scott: The pirate 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm thinking!

It’s not always easy to tell the difference
between thinking and looking out of the window.

        Wallace Stevens, Letters

 

 

 

 

Why there are so few great artists

Waiting is one of the great arts.

        Margery Allingham, The Tiger In The Smoke

 

 

 

 

 

 

March winds

The wind is rising...
    we must attempt to live.

        Paul Valery, Charmes. Le Cimetière Marin

 

 

 

Take it back

We cannot live securely in a world which is not our own,
in a world which is interpreted for us by others.
An interpreted world is not a home.
Part of the terror is to take back our own listening,
to put our ears to our own inner voices, to see our own light,
which is our birthright, and comes to us in silence.

        Hildegard of Bingen, Warrior of Light,
        by Elaine Bellezza, Gnosis magazine, 1991

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Fame Game

You have this need to be famous,
my therapist said, but I think
you should get a job first. If
you look at all the famous people,
they all had jobs. George Bush
never looks like he’s doing anything,
but he was once a President. You have
to start from somewhere. Otherwise
you’ll be famous inside
your own head, but so is everyone else.

            Hal Sirowitz