The Silent Tower

1. Alma
2. Tomm
3. no one
4. Brandon
5. Hannah
6. Chuck
7. Jonathan
8. Leslie
9. Greg
10. Alicia
11. *shrug*
12. Tanner
13. Elena
14. Lorie
15. *blink*
16. I don’t know that any of us have made it
17. Devlin
18. Chuck
19. Grant J
20. me
21. lacking a valid definition – *shrug*
22. ditto ^_^
23. Steve
24. don’t think I have one …
25. Chris
26. Ryan
27. Alicia
28. Grant I
29. I’ll let you know when it happens
30. *HUG*

Life is but a series of connections and an experiment in perception.
~mynorthwind

This is from a good friend of mine. She says she’s still not sure if it’s hers originally, but no other source has been found to attribute it to. I gladly leave it in her devoted watchcare

When you stop and look at it for a few minutes, there’s a lot being said here. A “series of connections” – yes, that would certainly be a good model for approaching life. Every moment of every day, we are brought in contact with various threads, each stretching from something – animate or inanimate – around us. As we act upon those threads, or they are acted upon around us, connections are made and strengthened by the actions that are taken and the events that take place. And as is the nature of interconnected things, when you pull hard enough on one set of strings, it can be felt across a large number of them. I think that’s why when you’ve been around people long enough, or had strong experiences, you can know when something happens in their lives. The connections that bind you begin to go taut, and though how much you know depends on just how well you know them, you know something is going on.

As an “experiment in perception” – most definitely. Everything we hold to, everything we ‘believe’, has been introduced into our lives as it is refined and defined by the manners in which we perceive it. It starts with the visceral experiences, each weighed and given rank and file by the heart – what we have passion for we remember, while much else falls to the wayside. Then the mind sorts, categorizes, and catalogs what has been taken in – it creates the order that some feel is the only necessity to hold the bastions of civilization in place. The last, perhaps the least explored – the body itself. The memories of movements that can be quicker than we can consciously process or respond to. The tugs toward something, the aversion to another – these are the brushes against the unknowables, and though it speaks to us in sense and thought, it is the body itself that allows us to learn the steps what let us move with them.

Life is but a series of connections and an experiment in perception. — emphasis my own. These two together – I do believe they cover everything

You know what happens when you dream of falling? Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
~Neil Gaiman

Did you ever try to turn yourself upside-down when you were a kid? No, I’m not talking about hanging from something. Maybe I should explain.
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People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
~Zig Ziglar

When I learn new things, I have a habit of taking that information and holding it across the faces of all the little flickering lights that make up the things I may already know. It means that cross-field application of concepts is slowly becoming a natural way of progressing for me ^_^ The quote this evening sparked me off on another such thoughtscape.

In Environmental Science, there is a thread I hear resounding through every page we read, every lecture we have, every experiment we do: sustainability. If we cannot find a way to progress that allows us to coexist with our surroundings instead of consistently depleting and destroying them, we will – in the end – destroy ourselves. The goal is to establish a level of interaction that will not draw, as my instructor says, from the principle of the environmental resources we have, but from the naturally accruing interest that arises when it is well managed.

Take those basic principles and pull them across. Now, work from, “… motivation doesn’t last … we recommend it daily.” Perhaps, what we’re doing here is working with a renewable resource that has been harvested beyond sustainability. We need to take the time to invest in those things that bring us motivation – to plant, to weed, to water, to nurture.

Which of course makes it all begin to bleed over. I’m sure you can probably think of a few other places these same principles could be applied. And so there’s my next question: how do you go about establishing a sustainable, renewable life? I think that’s going to be something playing around in the back of my head from here on out ^^

There’s no half-singing in the shower, you’re either a rock star or an opera diva.
~Josh Groban

There are days when you work hard, you accomplish much, and you feel satisfied.
There are days where plans fall through, things go wrong, and you feel like a wreck.
Then .. there are *those* days

Don’t worry, the only thing it’s not safe for is your sanity ^_~
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