I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon – the unimaginable universe.

I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

• From The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges 📚 💬

Holy Hill

“In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

Excerpt From Slowness by Milan Kundera 📚 💬

Once there were brook trout in the streams of the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

excerpt from The Road by Cormac McCarthy 📚 💬

The woman when she saw him put her arms around him and held him. Oh, she said, I am so glad to see you. She would talk to him sometimes about God. He tried to talk to God but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him and he didn’t forget. The woman said that was all right. She said that the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all of time.

excerpt from The Road by Cormac McCarthy 📚 💬

Be with those who help your being. Don’t sit with indifferent people, whose breath comes cold out of their mouths. Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.

• Rumi 📚 💬

That there was such a house in the world, lit and open and empty, became a story in those days; there were other stories, people were in motion, stories were all they cared to hear, stories were all they believed in, life had got that hard. The story of the house all lit, the house of four floors, seven chimneys, three hundred and sixty five stairs, fifty-two doors, traveled far; they were all travelers then. It met another story, a story about a world elsewhere, and a family whose names many knew, whose house had been large, and populous with griefs and happinesses that had once seemed endless, but had ended, or had stopped; and to those many who still dreamed of that family as often as their own, the two stories seemed one. The house could be found. In spring the basement lights went out, and one in the music room.

People in motion; stories starting in a dream, and spoken by unwise actors into wanting ears, then ceasing; the story turning back to dream, and then haunting the day, told and retold. People knew there was a house made of time, and many set out to find it.

• from Little, Big by John Crowley 📚 💬

Currently reading: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne 📚

Currently reading: The Art of Communicating by Thich Nhat Hanh 📚

Finished reading: The Blue Fox by Sjón 📚

George Brown School of Engineering at Rice University

Finished reading: Queen of Angels by Greg Bear 📚

A great tree on the Rice campus today

Currently reading: Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton 📚

Currently reading: Queen of Angels by Greg Bear 📚

Finished reading: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi 📚

Currently reading: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr 📚

Finished reading: The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 📚

Finished reading: A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins 📚

Currently reading: The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 📚