Quote Edition: Part 1 (Just assuming more to come)

I am going to do the unoriginal and lazy thing and throw some quotes out here because a) I do not want to expend the energy to write anything of my own b)some things are worth repeating. I do this knowing that these quotes are not as powerful out of context, just as the highlight of the recent soccer match or football game does not carry with it the significance of watching it in the moment. However, for this... I just changed my mind. Don't read any of the following. Instead, check out the following books** and you will find these powerful excerpts and experience them in full (in the context in which they were written to be experienced). I know I could have deleted this all and left it at that; though it would not have left the trace of the thoughts I had. It would have also erased the idea that arose out of this: experiencing things out of context, or secondhand, is never the same as in the original form. Now, this is may seem to be a banal and obvious statement. Though, it is simple wisdom. It is better for us to experience for ourselves and at our own times. I don't want to spoon-feed some quotes that I hold dear, because they will not be experienced in the same way I did. Rather, I should embody the principles/ethics/ideals these nuggets of wisdom inspired in me. I must take these forth and incorporate into my being; create my own new expression. So...

**Books are:
Jack Kerouac - "On the Road" & "Dharma Bums"

Edward Abbey - "The Fool's Progress" & "Desert Solitaire"

Robert Pirsig - "Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"


Well. This is the point at which I wish I could redact the title of my entry.



Kerouac:

"...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' "

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

"Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry."

"There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars."

"Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream."

"I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness."

"I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference."

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost."

"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling."

"It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate's so easy compared."

"The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words."

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Edward Abbey

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds."

"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit."

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Robert Pirsig

"The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there."

"Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships."

"Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive."

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