Foundation's Edge Quotes

You show me someone who can't understand people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.

It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.

In the company of women like this— sharp-edged as raw diamonds but with soft hands and hearts, not strong in spite of anything but powerful because of everything— I feel invincible. Every chink and rut and battering wind has made us tough and brave and impossible to strike down. We are mountains— or perhaps temples, with foundations that could outlast time itself.

The advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.

Eroticism is the brink of the abyss. I'm leaning out over deranged horror (at this point my eyes roll back in my head). The abyss is the foundation of the possible. We're brought to the edge of the same abyss by uncontrolled laughter or ecstasy. From this comes a "questioning" of everything possible. This is the stage of rupture, of letting go of things, of looking forward to death.

What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep

Master of masters, O maker of heroes, Thunder the brave, Irresistible message: 'Life is worth living Through every grain of it From the foundations To the last edge Of the cornerstone, death.

Pelorat sighed. 'I will never understand people.' 'There's nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else.

humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos.

Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine. If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it. Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured entirely by your favorite means of sidestepping the suffering you rarely allow yourself to feel. And when you do touch the surface of your suffering, perhaps in the form of boredom, you quickly pick up a magazine or the remote control. Instead, feel your suffering, rest with it, embrace it, make love with it. Feel your suffering so deeply and thoroughly that you penetrate it, and realize its fearful foundation. Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering. By eliminating the safety net of comforts in your life, you have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openness which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love.

Crimson flames tied through my ears Rollin' high and mighty traps Pounced with fire on flaming roads Using ideas as my maps "We'll meet on edges, soon," said I Proud 'neath heated brow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth "Rip down all hate," I screamed Lies that life is black and white Spoke from my skull. I dreamed Romantic facts of musketeers Foundationed deep, somehow. Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

Anyone who displays a capacity for double-dealing must forever be suspected of being capable of displaying it again.

There’s no record in the history of the Galaxy of any society being so foolish as to use nuclear explosions as a weapon of war.

A happy wall is a long-lived wall, a practical wall, a useful wall.

We abandoned the appearance of power to preserve the essence of it.

The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie.’ 

When one’s home has a really excellent computer capable of reaching other computers anywhere in the Galaxy, one scarcely needs to budge, you know.

A wall is happy when it is well designed, when it rests firmly on its foundation, when its symmetry balances its part and produces no unpleasant stresses. Good design can be worked out on the mathematical principles of mechanics.

He didn’t believe that, surely.” “Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn’t want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.’ 

You underestimate the depths to which mysticism can bury rationality, Golan.

A nuclear blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what is right.

Toda humanidade pode compartilhar a mesma insanidade e estar imersa em uma ilusão comum enquanto vive em um caos comum.

The Library was outmoded and archaic—it had been so even in Ebling Mis's time—but that was all to the good. Pelorat always rubbed his hands with excitement when he thought of an old and outmoded Library. The older and the more outmoded, the more likely it was to have what he needed. In his dreams, he would enter the Library and ask in breathless alarm, 'Has the Library been modernized? Have you thrown out the old tapes and computerizations?' And always he imagined the answer from dusty and ancient librarians, 'As it has been, Professor, so it is still.

All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else.

- Golan, spuse Pelorat, am impresia ca progresul civilizatiei nu reprezinta nimic altceva decat un exercitiu de limitare a intimitatii.

Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect was the work for which he ultimately won the Nobel Prize. It was published in 1905, and Einstein has another paper in the very same journal where it appeared - his other paper was the one that formulated the special theory of relativity. That's what it was like to be Einstein in 1905; you publish a groundbreaking paper that helps lay the foundation of quantum mechanics, and for which you later win the Nobel Prize, but it's only the second most important paper that you publish in that issue of the journal.

From the radiating point of Siwenna, the forces of the Empire reached out cautiously into the black unknown of the Periphery. Giant ships passed the vast distances that separated the vagrant stars at the Galaxy’s rim, and felt their way around the outermost edge of Foundation influence.

From this foundation of spirituality, three other significant patterns emerged as being essential to resilience: Cultivating hope Practicing critical awareness Letting go of numbing and taking the edge off vulnerability, discomfort, and pain

the eye were no more than sense organs. The brain was no more than a central switchboard, encased in bone and removed from the working surface of the body. It was the hands that were the working surface, the hands that felt and manipulated the universe. Human beings thought with their hands. It was their hands that were the answer of curiosity, that felt and pinched and turned and lifted and hefted. There were animals that had brains of respectable size, but they had no hands and that made all the difference.

Daedalus had told me a story once about the lords of Crete who used to hire him to enlarge their houses. He would arrive with his tools, begin taking down the walls, pulling up the floors. But whenever he found some problem underneath that must first be fixed, they frowned. That was not in the agreement! Of course not, he said, it has been hidden in the foundation, but look, there it is, plain as day. See the cracked beam? See the beetles eating the floor? See how the stone is sinking into the swamp? That only made the lords angrier. It was fine until you dug it up! We will not pay! Close it up, plaster over. It has stood this long, it will stand longer. So he would seal that fault up, and the next season the house would fall down. Then they would come to him, demanding back their money. “I told them,” he said to me. “I told them and told them. When there is rot in the walls, there is only one remedy.” The purple bruise at my throat was turning green at its edges. I pressed it, felt the splintered ache. Tear down, I thought. Tear down and build again.

Pelorat said, ‘It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.

The horror is having profound power in one hand and a strong moral sense in the other and absolutely no foundation to stand on.

If economics is the dismal science, then quantum gravity is the dismal physics

Societies create their own history and tend to wipe out lowly beginnings, either by forgetting them or inventing totally fictitious heroic rescues.

All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos.

sipping wine while the house was falling,

Ideally there should be no detectable connection between any two Observers, so that the loss of one would not entail the loss of any other.

You are now too old to be made a scholar after my fashion, but you are never too old to learn more than you already know and to become able to do more than you already can.

(commonly known as simply “The Foundation

Pelorat said, “It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.

You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself—no offense intended.

If it’s the product of nonhuman minds and hands, what may seem primitive may, in actual fact, be merely nonhuman.

THE FOUNDATION NOVELS Prelude to Foundation Foundation Foundation and Empire Second Foundation Foundation’s Edge Forward the Foundation

the satisfied awe that marks the triumph of someone who has been hovering at the edge of an inferiority complex for three years.

a circle has no end

In fact, no one noticed that the Empire had lost its drive, its forward look, because Trantor gleamed in shining metal.

what if there are a million intelligences in the Galaxy, but only one that is expansionist

She had only to endure and trust in God. She knew that the big house, the house of pride where the white folks lived, would come down; it was written in the Word of God. They, who walked so proudly now, had not fashioned for themselves or their children so sure a foundation as was hers. They walked on the edge of a steep place and their eyes were sightless—God would cause them to rush down, as the herd of swine had once rushed down, into the sea. For all that they were so beautiful, and took their ease, she knew them, and she pitied them, who would have no covering in the great day of His wrath.

There are always tales and there is always a patriotic refusal to disbelieve, even though the tales are never in the least credible and are never believed by anyone not of the world that produces them.

Pelorat sighed. “I will never understand people.” “There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves.

Bliss approached him slowly, placed her hand on his shoulder. “Pel, I—I think well of you.” Pelorat looked away. “It’s all right, Bliss. You needn’t be kind.” “I’m not being kind, Pel. I think—very well of you.

As Charles de Gaulle observed in his meditation on leadership, The Edge of the Sword (1932), the artist ‘does not renounce the use of his intelligence’ – which is, after all, the source of ‘lessons, methods, and knowledge’. Instead, the artist adds to these foundations ‘a certain instinctive faculty which we call inspiration’, which alone can provide the ‘direct contact with nature from which the vital spark must leap’.

Instead of being afraid of that darkness, we should bring everyone to the edge of it and say: Look! Here is an area that needs illumination Bring fire, torches, candles -- anything you can think of that will cast light. Then we can lay down our foundations and build our great buildings, cure diseases, invent fabulous new machines, and whatever else we think the human race should be doing. But first of all we need some light.

Art is the cutting edge of the mind, the perpetual out-reaching of thought into the unknown, the act in which thought eternally sets itself a fresh problem. So play, which is identical with art, is the attitude which looks at the world as an infinite and indeterminate field for activity, a perpetual adventure. All life is an adventure, and the spirit of adventure, wherever it is found, can never be out of place. It is true that life is much more than this; it is never, even its most irresponsible moments, a mere adventure; but this it is; and therefore the spirit of play, the spirit of eternal youth, is the foundation and beginning of all real life. 1

How long, O Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children’s toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, O holy Son of God, how long?

There was hope for peace, but there will be no peace here. Not soon. There was hope for quiet, but there will be no quiet here. Not in this generation. The foundations of the home we founded are somewhat shaky, and repeating earthquakes rattle it. So what we really have in this land is an ongoing adventure. An odyssey. The Jewish state does not resemble any other nation. What this nation has to offer is not security or well-being or peace of mind. What it has to offer is the intensity of life on the edge. The adrenaline rush of living dangerously, living lustfully, living to the extreme. If a Vesuvius-like volcano were to erupt tonight and end our Pompeii, this is what it will petrify: a living people. People that have come from death and were surrounded by death but who nevertheless put up a spectacular spectacle of life. People who danced the dance of life to the very end.

Well, besides, I’ve arranged with the computer that anyone who doesn’t look and sound like one of us will be killed if he—or she—tries to board the ship. I’ve taken the liberty of explaining that to the Port Commander. I told him very politely that I would love to turn off that particular facility out of deference to the reputation that the Sayshell City Spaceport holds for absolute integrity and security—throughout the Galaxy, I said—but the ship is a new model and I didn’t know how to turn it off.” “He didn’t believe that, surely.” “Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn’t want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said.” “And that’s another example of how people are?” “Yes. You’ll get used to this.

I have always found in my own work—quite different from yours, of course, but possibly we may generalize—that zeroing in tightly on a particular problem is self-defeating. Why not relax and talk about something else, and your unconscious mind—not laboring under the weight of concentrated thought—may solve the problem for you.

I have always found in my own work – quite different from yours, of course, but possibly we may generalize – that zeroing in tightly on a particular problem is self-defeating. Why not relax and talk about something else, and your unconscious mind – not labouring under the weight of concentrated thought – may solve the problem for you.

The trailer rocked as the bulldozer slammed into it. The trailer lurched, windows shattering. The lights went out. The trailer backed up, took another run, full-throttle this time. The blade of the bulldozer punched through a wall of the office, the engine revving as it slowly pushed the trailer toward the ravine. One wall buckled as the trailer tore free of its foundation, digging furrows in the earth as it was pushed closer and closer to the edge of the ravine.

Postmodern architecture has its own version of the pastiche or collage. As one journalist puts it, postmodernism “has brought us girders hanging unfinished out of the edges of buildings, archways cut off in space, and walls which don’t meet walls.” Ravi Zacharias describes seeing a building designed by a postmodern architect. “I had just one question,” Zacharias says. “Did he do the same with the foundation?” 5 It was an apologetics argument put in artistic terms.

His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the hyper- video, and occasionally in tremendous three- dimensional newscasts covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a Galactic Council. Even though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax, which circled a star at the edges of the Blue Drift, he was not cut off from civilization, you see. At that time, no place in the Galaxy was.

Centuries later, an Arab traveler would visit a town on the edge of Europe and reflect on what had happened in the Roman Empire. “During the early days of the empire of the Rum,” he wrote—meaning the Roman and Byzantine Empire—“the sciences were honoured and enjoyed universal respect. From an already solid and grandiose foundation, they were raised to greater heights every day, until the Christian religion made its appearance among the Rum; this was a fatal blow to the edifice of learning; its traces disappeared and its pathways were effaced.

I can't believe you. Are you under the impression that the Second Foundation is doing this for us? That they are some sort of idealists? Isn't it clear to you from your knowledge of politics—that they are doing it for themselves? We are the cutting edge. We are the engine, the force. We labor and sweat and bleed and weep. They merely control—adjusting an amplifier here, closing a contact there, and doing it all with ease and without risk to themselves. Then, when it is all done and when, after a thousand years of heaving and straining, we have set up the Second Galactic Empire, the people of the Second Foundation will move in as the ruling elite.

Antique Foundation Here I built the ruin in My voice on either side of me In the temple the ocean could Not be a crowd I mined The shore with fog the sun dries These bricks I built the vision in The cinder block that is the city Wall this grave Tone I speak with a picture Of myself in my wallet • Don’t be fooled by grass and these words Grass whispers Because they are real they are Ruinous Here, the gossip is in the dust Not the sea cloud enters the open Child’s window dimming the silver Flute’s sheen Where is he Who hears inside the brick those notes? There is a rumor in the city we’ll exist If he plays his song no one knows • Follow that shadow don’t tell me it’s mine Here there is no being alone Here are my hands which tore the leaves so Quietly in the temple the god Emerging from marble points at the chisel At the base of his stone Did I tell you Where I’m going? To the old man Who sings the margin Where on wave-tip swords turn edge over edge Wound us and the shore with foam • My face on either side of my face I tore My picture in half to show the gate You must climb inside your breath to leave As fog the wind will bear you— If you’re lovely—away In the spare clouds The children’s chorus Do you hear?— Where were you, and where are you going? Here I built the ruin in the stone-crushed Sage leaves my hands scented as long ago When I liked to press the desert against my head to think

But there was nothing. No village or town as far as her eyes could strain. Nowhere for her saviours to come from and take her to; just fields and trees and the weeping arc of the river Greave all the way to the horizon. Just like in the books, Greaveburn was all there was; building and building until streets were foundations, roofs were floors, constantly climbing away from itself. now that Abrasia saw it, her dream of escape crumbled completely like an ancient map in her fingers. The horizon was the world's edge and there was nothing beyond it but mist and falling. Greaveburn stood alone on this little circle of earth, the river running around and into itself like a snake eating its tail. And Abrasia was doomed to watch the sun and stars trade places for all eternity.

After a couple of hours, I reach an old house near the edge of the lake. Maybe “house” is too big a word for it. It’s only one room, about twelve feet square. My father thought that a long time ago there were a lot of buildings — you can still see some of the foundations — and people came to them to play and fish in the lake. This house outlasted the others because it’s made of concrete. Floor, roof, ceiling. Only one of four glass windows remains, wavy and yellowed by time. There’s no plumbing and no electricity, but the fireplace still works and there’s a woodpile in the corner that my father and I collected years ago. I start a small fire, counting on the mist to obscure any telltale smoke. While the fire catches, I sweep out the snow that has accumulated under the empty windows, using a twig broom my father made me when I was about eight and I played house here.

From Sister by ROSAMUND LUPTON    The rain hammered down onto your coffin, pitter-patter; ‘Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, I hear raindrops’; I was five and singing it to you, just born. Your coffin reached the bottom of the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you. Then Mum stepped forwards and took a wooden spoon from her coat pocket. She loosened her fingers and it fell on top of your coffin. Your magic wand. And I threw the emails I sign ‘lol’. And the title of older sister. And the nickname Bee. Not grand or important to anyone else, I thought, this bond that we had. Small things. Tiny things. You knew that I didn’t make words out of my alphabetti spaghetti but I gave you my vowels so you could make more words out of yours. I knew that your favourite colour used to be purple but then became bright yellow; (‘Ochre’s the arty word, Bee’) and you knew mine was orange, until I discovered that taupe was more sophisticated and you teased me for that. You knew that my first whimsy china animal was a cat (you lent me 50p of your pocket money to buy it) and that I once took all my clothes out of my school trunk and hurled them around the room and that was the only time I had something close to a tantrum. I knew that when you were five you climbed into bed with me every night for a year. I threw everything we had together - the strong roots and stems and leaves and beautiful soft blossoms of sisterhood - into the earth with you. And I was left standing on the edge, so diminished by the loss, that I thought I could no longer be there. All I was allowed to keep for myself was missing you. Which is what? The tears that pricked the inside of my face, the emotion catching at the top of my throat, the cavity in my chest that was larger than I am. Was that all I had now? Nothing else from twenty-one years of loving you. Was the feeling that all is right with the world, my world, because you were its foundations, formed in childhood and with me grown into adulthood - was that to be replaced by nothing? The ghastliness of nothing. Because I was nobody’s sister now. I saw Dad had been given a handful of earth. But as he held out his hand above your coffin he couldn’t unprise his fingers. Instead, he put his hand into his pocket, letting the earth fall there and not onto you. He watched as Father Peter threw the first clod of earth instead and broke apart, splintering with the pain of it. I went to him and took his earth-stained hand in mine, the earth gritty between our soft palms. He looked at me with love. A selfish person can still love someone else, can’t they? Even when they’ve hurt them and let them down. I, of all people, should understand that. Mum was silent as they put earth over your coffin. An explosion in space makes no sound at all.

Philosophers and many proponents of cognitive psychology hold that moral judgments are within our control, and thus people who choose to commit crimes, barring delusions, know what they are doing and that it is wrong. The legal system depends on this notion. However, recent research suggests that damage to an area of the brain just behind the eyes can transform the way people make moral decisions. The results indicate that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, implicated in the feeling of compassion, may be the foundation for moral regulations, assisting us in inhibiting (or not) harmful treatment of others. Failure in its development, or damage to it, might alter the way a person perceives the moral landscape, which will thus affect his or her actions. If juries include information of this kind in their deliberations, it could mitigate the harshness of the sentences they impose on convicted criminals. While more research must be done, other types of brain scans are being entered as evidence in the trials of some heinous crimes to show that the perpetrator could not help what he did.

Vicky turned her face away from her son, towards the sea. She spoke softly, too softly for him to hear. “I only want to remember him.” The thrashing of the rain had dug tiny gutters around her feet. The ground had begun to loosen and Alexander felt it shift. A crack opened between them: twenty-two years of standing in the same spot had undermined the cliff’s foundation. Alexander reached out frantically towards his mother, his eyes wide with fright. He screamed for her to take his hand. Vicky reached out towards her son but when her hand was almost in his, she stopped. Her fear left her and she smiled. She let her hand drop to her side. “For God’s sake, Mother!” Alexander could say nothing more. The wind and rain howled, and blasts of thunder and lightning crashed everywhere, but he had never seen his mother so calm, so beautiful. It was as if she had been waiting for her turn, and it had finally come. The ground gave out under her and he watched his mother disappear with the cliff’s crumbling edge. Her body was never found. All the villagers said that she was finally returned to her beloved Tom, beneath the ocean’s waves.

It is challenging to honor the descent in a culture that primary values the ascent. We like things rising—stock markets, the GDP, profit margins. We get anxious when things go down. Even within psychology, there is a premise that is biased toward improvement, always getting better, rising above our troubles. We hold dear concepts like progress and integration. These are fine in and of themselves, but it is not the way psyche works. Psyche, we must remember, was shaped by and is rooted in the foundations of nature. As such, psyche also experiences times of decay and death, of stopping, regression, and being still. Much happens in these times that deepen the soul. When all we are shown is the imagery of ascent, we are left to interpret the times of descent as pathological; we feel that we are somehow failing. As poet and author Robert Bly wryly noted, “How can we get a look at the cinders side of things when the society is determined to create a world of shopping malls and entertainment complexes in which we are made to believe that there is no death, disfigurement, illness, insanity, lethargy, or misery? Disneyland means ‘no ashes.’ 

Crimson flames tied through my ears Rollin' high and mighty traps Pounced with fire on flaming roads Using ideas as my maps "We'll meet on edges, soon," said I Proud 'neath heated brow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth "Rip down all hate," I screamed Lies that life is black and white Spoke from my skull. I dreamed Romantic facts of musketeers Foundationed deep somehow [chorus] Girls' faces formed the forward path From phony jealousy To memorizing politics Of ancient history Flung down by corpse evangelists Unthought of, though, somehow [chorus] A self-ordained professor's tongue Too serious to fool Spouted out that liberty Is just equality in school "Equality," I spoke the word As if a wedding vow {chorus] In a soldier's stance, I aim my hand At the mongrel dogs who teach Fearing not that I'd become my enemy In the instant that I preach My pathway led by confusion boats Mutiny from stern to bow [chorus] Yes , my guard stood hard when abstract threats Too noble to neglect Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect Good and bad, I define these terms Quite clear, no doubt, somehow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now

It was in postwar Paris that Mandelbrot began this quest in earnest. Uncle Szolem urged him to attend the École Normale Supérieure, France’s most rarefied institution of higher learning, where Mandelbrot had earned entry at the age of twenty (one of only twenty Frenchmen to do so). But the aridly abstract style of mathematics practiced there was uncongenial to him. At the time, the École Normale—dite normale, prétendue supérieure, says the wag—was dominated in mathematics by a semisecret cabal called Bourbaki. (The name Bourbaki was jocularly taken from a hapless nineteenth-century French general who once tried to shoot himself in the head but missed.) Its leader was André Weil, one of the supreme mathematicians of the twentieth century (and the brother of Simone Weil). The aim of Bourbaki was to purify mathematics, to rebuild it on perfectly logical foundations untainted by physical or geometric intuition. Mandelbrot found the Bourbaki cult, and Weil in particular, “positively repellent.” The Bourbakistes seemed to cut off mathematics from natural science, to make it into a sort of logical theology. They regarded geometry, so integral to Mandelbrot’s Keplerian dream, as a dead branch of mathematics, fit for children at best.

4Paul Gaydos My Books Browse ▾ Community ▾ The Way of the Superior Man Quotes The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to... by David Deida Read Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine. If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it. Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured entirely by your favorite means of sidestepping the suffering you rarely allow yourself to feel. And when you do touch the surface of your suffering, perhaps in the form of boredom, you quickly pick up a magazine or the remote control. Instead, feel your suffering, rest with it, embrace it, make love with it. Feel your suffering so deeply and thoroughly that you penetrate it, and realize its fearful foundation. Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering. By eliminating the safety net of comforts in your life, you have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openness which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love.

And he felt it. Rogal Dorn had been feeling it for days, weeks, building up, up, up, rising over him like a black fog, dragging at his limbs, clogging his mind, making him question every decision he made, every order he gave. He hadn’t had any respite at all, of any kind, for three months. Three months! His sharpness was going now, his reactions were slower. A billion functionaries depending on him for everything, reaching out to him, suffocating him with their endless demands, pleas for help, for guidance. A billion eyes, on him, all the time. And he’d fought, too. He’d fought. He’d fought primarchs, brothers he’d once thought of as equals or betters. He’d seen the hatred in Perturabo’s eyes, the mania in Fulgrim’s, stabbing at him, poisoning him. Every duel, every brief foray into combat, had chipped a bit more off, had weakened the foundations a little further. Fulgrim had been the worst. His brother’s old form, so pleasing to the eye, had gone, replaced by bodily corruption so deep he scarcely had the words for it. That degradation repulsed him almost more than anything else. It showed just how far you could fall, if you lost your footing in reality completely. You couldn’t show that repulsion. You couldn’t betray the doubt, or give away the fatigue. You couldn’t give away so much as a flicker of weakness, or the game was up, so Dorn’s face remained just as it always had been – static, flinty, curt. He kept his shoulders back, spine straight. He hid the fevers that raged behind his eyes, the bone-deep weariness that throbbed through every muscle, all for show, all to give those who looked up to him something to cling on to, to believe in. The Emperor, his father, was gone, silent, locked in His own unimaginable agonies, and so everything else had crashed onto his shoulders. The weight of the entire species, all their frailties and imperfections, wrapped tight around his mouth and throat and nostrils, choking him, drowning him, making him want to cry out loud, to cower away from it, something he would never do, could never do, and so he remained where he was, caught between the infinite weight of Horus’ malice and the infinite demands of the Emperor’s will, and it would break him, he knew, break him open like the walls themselves, which were about to break now too, despite all he had done, but had it been enough, yes it had, no it could not have been, they would break, they must not break… He clenched his fist, curling the fingers up tight. His mind was racing again. He was on the edge, slipping into a fugue state, the paralysis he dreaded. It came from within. It came from without. Something – something – was making the entire structure around him panic, weaken, fail in resolve. He was not immune. He was the pinnacle – when the base was corrupted, he, too, eventually, would shatter.

Our supposed leader was Miss Joyce, who had been working as a civil servant in the department since its foundation forty-five years earlier in 1921. She was sixty-three years old and, like my late adoptive mother Maude, was a compulsive smoker, favouring Chesterfield Regulars (Red), which she imported from the United States in boxes of one hundred at a time and stored in an elegantly carved wooden box on her desk with an illustration of the King of Siam on the lid. Although our office was not much given to personal memorabilia, she kept two posters pinned to the wall beside her in defence of her addiction. The first showed Rita Hayworth in a pinstriped blazer and white blouse, her voluminous red hair tumbling down around her shoulders, professing that ‘ALL MY FRIENDS KNOW THAT CHESTERFIELD IS MY BRAND’ while holding an unlit cigarette in her left hand and staring off into the distance, where Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin were presumably pleasuring themselves in anticipation of erotic adventures to come. The second, slightly peeling at the edges and with a noticeable lipstick stain on the subject’s face, portrayed Ronald Reagan seated behind a desk that was covered in cigarette boxes, a Chesterfield hanging jauntily from the Gipper’s mouth. ‘I’M SENDING CHESTERFIELDS TO ALL MY FRIENDS. THAT’S THE MERRIEST CHRISTMAS ANY SMOKER CAN HAVE – CHESTERFIELD MILDNESS PLUS NO UNPLEASANT AFTER-TASTE’ it said, and sure enough he appeared to be wrapping boxes in festive paper for the likes of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, who, I’m sure, were only thrilled to receive them

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

Very well-why don't you make your case?" And perhaps if she listened and closely observed, she might get some hint of what, beneath the words, behind his so often impassive mask, was really going on inside him. "Your case beyond the obvious social imperatives, that is." "Difficult given my case is based on the obvious social imperatives." "Nevertheless, you might at least try to find a broader foundation." From the corner of her eye, she saw him look up as if imploring divine aid-or perhaps more prosaically asking why me?-and had to hide a smile. Eventually he lowered his head and leveled his hazel gaze at her. "All right-let's try for a broader perspective. You're a Cynster, well bred, well connected, well dowered, and more than passably attractive." She inclined her head. "Thank you, kind sir." "Don't thank me yet. You're also opinionated, willful to a fault, argumentative, and at times irrationally stubborn. Be that as it may, for some reason I don't comprehend, we managed to run along reasonably well through the last week or so, when we had a common goal. I take that as an indication that, were we to marry and jointly take on the common goal of managing my father's estate, the estate that will in time be ours, we would again find ourselves on common ground, enough at least to make a marriage work." He'd surprised her. Leaning back, she looked at him. He'd angled his shoulders into the curve of the wall, stretching one arm along the upper edge, long legs stretched out so that his boots brushed her hems. At ease, relaxed and debonair, he appeared the epitome of the sophisticated London rake, which, of course, he was. He was also an enigma. At some point during their hike through the mountains, she'd realized that no matter what he allowed her to see, there was something different, something even more attractive, beneath his polished veneer. "You'd share the responsibilities of running the estate?" She hasn't expected him to speak of such matters. "If you wished to involve yourself with it.

Complex systems are more spontaneous, more disorderly, more alive than that. At the same time, however, their peculiar dynamism is also a far cry from the weirdly unpredictable gyrations known as chaos. In the past two decades, chaos theory has shaken science to its foundations with the realization that very simple dynamical rules can give rise to extraordinarily intricate behavior; witness the endlessly detailed beauty of fractals, or the foaming turbulence of a river. And yet chaos by itself doesn't explain the structure, the coherence, the self-organizing cohesiveness of complex systems. Instead, all these complex systems have somehow acquired the ability to bring order and chaos into a special kind of balance. This balance point—often called the edge of chaos—is were the components of a system never quite lock into place, and yet never quite dissolve into turbulence, either. The edge of chaos is where life has enough stability to sustain itself and enough creativity to deserve the name of life. The edge of chaos is where new ideas and innovative genotypes are forever nibbling away at the edges of the status quo, and where even the most entrenched old guard will eventually be overthrown. The edge of chaos is where centuries of slavery and segregation suddenly give way to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s; where seventy years of Soviet communism suddenly give way to political turmoil and ferment; where eons of evolutionary stability suddenly give way to wholesale species transformation. The edge of chaos is the constantly shifting battle zone between stagnation and anarchy, the one place where a complex system can be spontaneous, adaptive, and alive. Complexity, adaptation, upheavals at the edge of chaos—these common themes are so striking that a growing number of scientists are convinced that there is more here than just a series of nice analogies. The movement's nerve center is a think tank known as the Santa Fe Institute, which was founded in the mid-1980s and which was originally housed in a rented convent in the midst of

Dear Brave People, I realise that it appears I'm fearless. I can make that presentation with ease, I can stand near the edge of the cliff and look down, and I can befriend that spider in the bathroom. (He's called Steve). But recently I've realised that's not what makes people brave. Brave has a different meaning. I'm afraid of people leaving. After I watched my best friend become someone else's and I was forced into befriending my childhood bully, I realised I don't want to let myself go through this again. I see my fear come through when questioning my boyfriend;s affections. I see it when I distance myself from my friends who are going to leave for university. Isee it in my overanalysis of my parents' relationship and paranoia over a possible divorce. I don't want to be alone. I'm afraid of failure. I aced my exams and the bar has moved up again. I have those high expectations along with everyone else, but I know now that maybe the tower is just too tall, and I should've built stronger foundations. I act like I know what I'm doing, but really I'm drifting away from the shore faster and faster. I don't want to let anyone down. I'm afraid of change. I don't know where I lie anymore. I thought I knew what to do in my future, but I can't bear to think that I'm now not so sure. I thought I was completely straight, but now it's internal agony as I'm not so sure. Turns out I thought a lot of things. I don't want my life to not be the way I expected. I may not be scared of crowds. Or the dark. Or small spaces. But I am afraid. I am afraid of responsibility; I am afraid of not living up to expectations, of the changing future, of growing up, not knowing, sex, relationships, hardship, secrets, grades, judgment, falling short, loneliness, change, confusion, arguments, curiosity, love, hate, losing, pressure, differences, honesty, lies. I am afraid of me. Yet, despite this, I know I am brave. I know I am brave because I've accepted my invisible fears and haven't let them overcome me. I want you to know that you're brave because you know your fears. You're brave because you introduced yourself. You're brave because you said "No, I don't understand." You're brave because you're here. I hope you can learn from me and be brave in your own way. I know I am. -B

That was the whole trouble with police work. You come plunging in. a jagged Stone Age knife, to probe the delicate tissues of people's relationships, and of course you destroy far more than you discover. And even what you discover will never be the same as it was before you came; the nubbly scars of your passage will remain. At the very least. you have asked questions that expose to the destroying air fibers that can only exist and fulfill their function in coddling darkness. Cousin Amy, now, mousing about in back passages or trilling with feverish shyness at sherry parties—was she really made all the way through of dust and fluff and unused ends of cotton and rusty needles and unmatching buttons and all the detritus at the bottom of God's sewing basket? Or did He put a machine in there to tick away and keep her will stern and her back straight as she picks out of a vase of brown-at-the-edges dahlias the few blooms that have another day's life in them? Or another machine, one of His chemistry sets, that slowly mixes itself into an apparently uncaused explosion, poof!, and there the survivors are sitting covered with plaster dust among the rubble of their lives. It's always been the explosion by the time the police come stamping in with ignorant heels on the last unbroken bit of Bristol glass; with luck they can trace the explosion back to harmless little Amy, but as to what set her off—what were the ingredients of the chemistry set and what joggled them together—it was like trying to reconstruct a civilization from three broken pots and a seven-inch lump of baked clay which might, if you looked at its swellings and hollows the right way, have been the Great Earth Mother. What's more. people who've always lived together think that they are still the same—oh, older of course and a bit more snappish, but underneath still the same laughing lad of thirty years gone by. "My Jim couldn't have done that." they say. "I know him. Course he's been a bit depressed lately, funny like. but he sometimes goes that way for a bit and then it passes off. But setting fire to the lingerie department at the Army and Navy, Inspector—such a thought wouldn't enter into my Jim's head. I know him." Tears diminishing into hiccuping snivels as doubt spreads like a coffee stain across the threadbare warp of decades. A different Jim? Different as a Martian, growing inside the ever-shedding skin? A whole lot of different Jims. a new one every seven years? "Course not. I'm the same. aren't I, same as I always was—that holiday we took hiking in the Peak District in August thirty-eight—the same inside?" Pibble sighed and shook himself. You couldn't build a court case out of delicate tissues. Facts were the one foundation.

38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 2 “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? 3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. 4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. 5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— 7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels[a] shouted for joy? 8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, 9 when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, 10 when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, 11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’? 12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, 13 that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? 14 The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment. 15 The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken. 16 “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? 17 Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? 18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this. 19 “What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? 20 Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? 21 Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years! 22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, 23 which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? 24 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? 25 Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, 26 to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, 27 to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? 28 Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? 29 From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens 30 when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen? 31 “Can you bind the chains[b] of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? 32 Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons[c] or lead out the Bear[d] with its cubs? 33 Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s[e] dominion over the earth? 34 “Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? 35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 Who gives the ibis wisdom[f] or gives the rooster understanding?[g] 37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens 38 when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together? 39 “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions 40 when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? 41 Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?

Wickedness is devastated by the storm, but wisdom is the foundation of the world.14 10:26 Just as vinegar sets your teeth on edge and smoke stings your eyes, half-hearted effort is doomed to failure.

CONFUSION 2: HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITH YOUR CUSTOMER The next step in the Customer Satisfaction Process is to decide how to magnify the characteristics of your business that are most likely to appeal to your category of Customer. That begins with what marketing people call your Positioning Strategy. What do I mean by positioning your business? You position your business with words. A few well-chosen words to tell your Customers exactly what they want to hear. In marketing lingo, those words are called your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. For example, if you are targeting Tactile Customers (people), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where the feelings of people really count!” If you are targeting Experimental Customers (new things), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where living on the edge is a way of life!” In other words, when they choose to do business with your company, they can count on your job being unique, original, on the cutting edge. Do you get it? Do you see how the ordinary things most Contractors do to get Customers can be done in a significantly more effective way? Once you understand the essential principles of marketing The E-Myth Way, the strategies by which you attract customers can make an enormous difference in your market share. When applied to your business, your Positioning Strategy becomes the foundation of what we at E-Myth call your Lead Generation System.

dependability of your business. 6. If your Customer is Traditional, you have to talk about the financial competitiveness of your business. Additionally, what your Customers want is determined by who they are. Who they are is regularly demonstrated by what they do. Think about the Customers with whom you do business. Ask yourself: In which of the categories would I place them? What do they do for a living? For example: If they are mechanical engineers, they are probably Neutral Customers. If they are cardiologists, they are probably Tactile. If they are software engineers, they are probably Experimental. If they are accountants, they are probably Traditional. But don’t take my word for it. Make your own analysis. CONFUSION 2: HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITH YOUR CUSTOMER The next step in the Customer Satisfaction Process is to decide how to magnify the characteristics of your business that are most likely to appeal to your category of Customer. That begins with what marketing people call your Positioning Strategy. What do I mean by positioning your business? You position your business with words. A few well-chosen words to tell your Customers exactly what they want to hear. In marketing lingo, those words are called your USP, or Unique Selling Proposition. For example, if you are targeting Tactile Customers (people), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where the feelings of people really count!” If you are targeting Experimental Customers (new things), your USP could be: “Superior Contracting, where living on the edge is a way of life!” In other words, when they choose to do business with your company, they can count on your job being unique, original, on the cutting edge. Do you get it? Do you see how the ordinary things most Contractors do to get Customers can be done in a significantly more effective way? Once you understand the essential principles of marketing The E-Myth Way, the strategies by which you attract customers can make an enormous difference in your market share. When applied to your business, your Positioning Strategy becomes the foundation of what we at E-Myth call your Lead Generation System.

I think I took him to the beach that winter's day to show him that it offered a truer image of the human condition. One's foundations continually shift here; the sea regularly breaks through in new places, constantly forming new inlets, closing off old ones, running in new currents. The beach teaches us the need to adapt continually to change, always to be watching for undertows and rogue waves, to dance nimbly along its edges. If I have learned anything from living here, it is that this world is not geared for large answers, and certainly not for final ones.

Weights He buys me a ring with, you are the only thing I am living for, engraved along the edge and when I slip it on that expectation burns me. I feel it branding my skin. I can’t sleep for the fire of those words against my finger. My hand gets so heavy I can’t lift it to his face and months go by as the weight slides up my arm and into my shoulder. By Christmas I am bent double and gasping. By Easter I can’t get off the floor. It’s too much, I try to whisper, too much to carry this. You can’t build a life on another human being. We’re foundations of sand. We’re Atlas buckling under the sky.

From this foundation of spirituality, three other significant patterns emerged as being essential to resilience: 1. Cultivating hope 2. Practicing critical awareness 3. Letting go of numbing and taking the edge off vulnerability, discomfort, and pain

Enterprise agility is the foundation for enterprise success in the age of cutting-edge technology enabled disruption.

REMEMBERING THE WORDS OF MY LATE FATHER The time is 03.16 am the UK time and I have been thinking of you lately, nyana kaBhixa, Mngwevu, Tshangisa, Zulu, Skhomo, Mhlatyana, Rudulu. I listen and hear nothing but the echoes of your words of wisdom and encouragement in my daily life. Your priceless love for me and my late sister was the most solid foundation for our lives and the most nourishment of our souls which is still the pillar of the unbeatable strength that helps me stand tall against all odds. You always told us that life is a double-edged sword, it’s beautiful and enjoyable but there are times when it stings like a bee and the best thing to do is to take a cautious approach and remember that there will always be some victories along the way. Here are some of your words that continue to give me the ability to navigate throughout the challenges of life: . Know who you are,never compromise and sell yourself short . Stay authentic and never change because authenticity stiffens your backbone. . Always stand up for the truth no matter how high is the cost . Never eat like there is no tomorrow because you will not be able to survive in the times of famine. . Never sit too close to the fire because not every place is always has that kind of comfort. . Be aware of your surroundings and make it the part of your daily routine. . Always try to pull yourself together and remember that there are places where your tears will mean nothing to certain people. . Always remember that you were created to overcome every obstacle and to rise above every challenge. And never keep silent in the presence of your adversaries. . Always remember to share the little you have with those who are in need. . Never be afraid to say no when you have to say so. I give God all the glory for the choice He made before the foundation of the earth for choosing you to be my earthly father and I’m grateful for the years He allowed us to spend together on this planet. Thank you so much Tata for being a good and faithful steward of my life and thank you for the spirit of resilience that runs through the veins of every Xhosa heart. Lala ngoxolo Tshangisa. Love you so much.

To be brave is sometimes to be foolish.

Presently, foundational resources essential to cutting-edge AI research and development like compute power, datasets, development frameworks and pre-trained models, remain overwhelmingly centralized under the control of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and several other giants who operate the dominant cloud computing platforms. Open source efforts cannot truly flourish or compete if trapped within the confines of the Big Tech clouds and proprietary ecosystems.

Alliances, real alliances, are built from trust. They need it as a foundation if they are to survive. Alliances built from need are doomed to fail just as soon as one no longer needs the other. I didn't trust anyone

I came out at 32. Married my college sweetheart. Stay-at-home mama to 2 small children. Small town preacher's daughter living in a bubble of privilege she had no idea existed. Playgroups & sippy cups & easy predictability. An eternal restless, seeking edge telling me there was something more. There was that life. It was good. Safe. Stable. Then it was gone. “How did you not know you were queer?” My kids asked me this over the years. Their life in a sex-positive, queer-friendly, liberal utopian bubble made my lack of self-awareness utterly perplexing. It is hard to know a thing when you are given no context for it. You know there is a misfit, something not entirely right. But without options beyond compulsory heterosexuality & with a deep desire for approval, one does what one sees. At least, that is what one does until one no longer can. Being queer was like holding the golden ticket to a club nobody wanted to go to. I had no idea that once I blasted down those closet doors, with their bouncers of fear & religion & internal bias, the club would be lit. The way a party can be when everyone inside finally knows what it means to come home. My queerness is a Tupperware container (thank god) that nobody will ever find a lid for. A box that cannot be closed. The reclamation of wholeness over goodness, transforming the perpetual misfit into one holy hell of a celebration. Owning my queerness was like learning the desert floor was once the bottom of the ocean, meaning the towering 200-year-old saguaro watching over me was somehow born underwater. It is the dogged insistence on coloring outside of every single line. It is the refusal to accept a singular definition that makes the word witch at me finally feel at home in the spaces where words are left behind. My queerness rests its foundation on a ground named freedom. I speak it loudly because I have the freedom to do so without fear of reprisal or harm. I claim this life of mine under the rainbow & the complexity of the history it has given me fiercely. To love a woman in a world that said I must not will never be anything but a revolution. And when I kiss her, trust me, entire galaxies are mine

A majestic tidal wave of temper and domination, looking to break on my rocky shores. He would annihilate me. Batter my jagged defenses until he’d smoothed all my hard edges and whittled me away to my foundations. He pretended to be a simple passing storm in the distance, but I knew the devastation he could wreak. I could feel it, not just in my bones, but in my core where fissures of lust uncoiled and warmed me from the inside out.

In fact, in the mathematical formulations of cosmology, there are two symbols for the Galaxy: Gr for the ‘relativistic Galaxy,’ where the speed of light is a maximum, and Gh for the ‘hyperspatial Galaxy,’ where speed does not really have a meaning. Hyperspatially the value of all speed is zero and we do not move; with reference to space itself, speed is infinite. I can’t explain things a bit more than that. “Oh,

My Back Pages" Crimson flames tied through my ears Rollin' high and mighty traps Pounced with fire on flaming roads Using ideas as my maps "We'll meet on edges, soon," said I Proud 'neath heated brow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now. Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth "Rip down all hate," I screamed Lies that life is black and white Spoke from my skull, I dreamed Romantic facts of musketeers Foundationed deep, somehow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now. Girls' faces formed the forward path From phony jealousy To memorizing politics Of ancient history Flung down by corpse evangelists Unthought of, though, somehow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now. A self-ordained professor's tongue Too serious to fool Spouted out that liberty Is just equality in school "Equality," I spoke their word As if a wedding vow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now. In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand At the mongrel dogs who teach Fearing not I'd become my enemy In the instant that I preach My existence led by confusion boats Mutiny from stern to bow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now. Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats Too noble to neglect Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect Good and bad, I define these terms Quite clear, no doubt, somehow Ah, but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now. Bob Dylan, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964)

could he have done that if people weren’t easy to understand? You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself—no offense intended.