I'm still waiting to find out if I can get my old job back, but I'm fairoly confident it's just a matter of days. I went up to Mt Washington the other day. Very slushy, but enjoyable in some spots where it wasn't icy or too thick. Really soft landings for the terrain park. Got a $200 speeding ticket on the way there though. Anyways, I just finished reading two books and if I may, I'd like to share a few quotes/excerpts....

The Prophet (Kahlil Gibran)

On Giving
-You give but little when you give of your possessions
-For what are possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
-Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?
-You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture

Of Houses
-Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master? Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with a hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
-... the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning at the funeral.

On Talking
-You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts
-And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered
-There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone
-The silence of their aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape


Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

"Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams..."
"...No, it is impossibe; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence - that which makes its truth, its meaning - its subtle and pentrating essence. It is impossible. We live as we dream - alone..."

"Droll thing life is - that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope for is knowledge of self - that comes too late - a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectarors, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary."

"I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend I had no particualar desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulity in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance."



next up, Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre.
heavy....