“If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work… ‘All the pieces are put together, and the whole is yours …’ A word grows to a thought — a thought to an idea — an idea to an act….
Take a tour of a Scottish distillery and you’ll see the black stains on the sides of buildings and wonder. This is the residual build-up from centuries of evaporation of the angel’s share, the percentage of scotch that evaporates through the casks to go where it will. I’ve often thought of this evaporation process and…
The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorage is quicksand. This onward trick of nature is too strong for us: Pero si muove. When at night I look at the moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they to hurry….
I’m not a surfer, but I imagine them bobbing about in the swells, deciding which wave feels like the best for an epic ride to the beach. On some mornings writing feels a bit like that, with a series of false starts and bits of poetry and verse toyed with then put aside for another…
What good is livin’ a life you’ve been givenIf all you do is stand in one place – Lord Huron, Ends of the Earth If snow transforms the landscape, then a walk in that snowy terrain transforms the winter walker. Add a new path and suddenly you’re seeing the world entirely differently than you had…
“It is no harder to build something great than to build something good. It might be statistically more rare to reach greatness, but it does not require more suffering than perpetuating mediocrity.” – Jim Collins, Good to Great Good to Great came out twenty years ago this year. It’s interesting to see how the companies…
“That’s what makes death so hard – unsatisfied curiosity.” – Beryl Markham, West with the Night Where does restlessness come from? I believe it comes from that unsatisfied curiosity that Markham references above. What will you regret on your deathbed? The restlessness of the unexplored: unsatisfied curiosity. This phrase from such an accomplished woman, such…
“Mens sana in corpore sano” – The Latin phrase for “a strong mind in a strong body”, has been in my thoughts lately. Let’s face it, we aren’t getting any younger, and we’ve only got this one body, and this one mind, for this one life. If we don’t take care of them eventually each…
Coming up on a year of taking French lessons using Duolingo, and I recognize I’ve got a long, long way to go. Nothing impresses that on a person like listening to someone sing softly and rapidly in French, as Lous and the Yakuza did in a remarkable Tiny Desk Concert on NPR. It really wasn’t…
“It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.” – Alan Watts January is a funny month. Plans for the year generally completed, we look at the climb ahead and take our first steps into the unknown. Where will it take us? What will…
