Logged In And Stressed Out Quotes

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

It is very easy to grow tired at collecting; the period of a low tide is about all men can endure. At first the rocks are bright and every moving animal makes his mark on the attention. The picture is wide and colored and beautiful. But after an hour and a half the attention centers weary, the color fades, and the field is likely to narrow to an individual animal. Here one may observe his own world narrowed down until interest and, with it, observation, flicker and go out. And what if with age this weariness becomes permanent and observation dim out and not recover? Can this be what happens to so many men of science? Enthusiasm, interest, sharpness, dulled with a weariness until finally they retire into easy didacticism? With this weariness, this stultification of attention centers, perhaps there comes the pained and sad memory of what the old excitement was like, and regret might turn to envy of the men who still have it. Then out of the shell of didacticism, such a used-up man might attack the unwearied, and he would have in his hands proper weapons of attack. It does seem certain that to a wearied man an error in a mass of correct data wipes out all the correctness and is a focus for attack; whereas the unwearied man, in his energy and receptivity, might consider the little dross of error a by-product of his effort. These two may balance and produce a purer thing than either in the end. These two may be the stresses which hold up the structure, but it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die. We have known so many professors who once carried their listeners high on their single enthusiasm, and have seen these same men finally settle back comfortably into lectures prepared years before and never vary them again. Perhaps this is the same narrowing we observe in relation to ourselves and the tide pool—a man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world. If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time. Then ecology has a synonym which is ALL.

You were right, you know—coming here was completely crazy. It was irrational. To think I’d choose to go to a town where there’s no mall, much less a day spa, and one restaurant that doesn’t have a menu? Please. No medical technology, ambulance service or local police—how is it I thought that would be easier, less stressful? I almost slid off the mountain on my way into town!” “Ah… Mel…” “We don’t even have cable, no cell phone signal most of the time. And there’s not a single person here who can admire my Cole Haan boots which, by the way, are starting to look like crap from traipsing around forests and farms. Did you know that any critical illness or injury has to be airlifted out of here? A person would be crazy to find this relaxing. Renewing.” She laughed. “The state I was in, when I was leaving L.A., I thought I absolutely had to escape all the challenges. It never occurred to me that challenge would be good for me. A completely new challenge.” “Mel…” “When I told Jack I was pregnant, after promising him I had the birth control taken care of, he should have said, ‘I’m outta here, babe.’ But you know what he said? He said, ‘I have to have you and the baby in my life, and if you can’t stay here, I’ll go anywhere.’” She sniffed a little and a tear rolled down her cheek. “When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check to see if there are deer in the yard. Then I wonder what Preacher’s in the mood to fix for dinner. Jack’s usually already gone back to town—he likes splitting logs in the early morning—half the town wakes up to the sound of his ax striking wood. I see him five or ten times through the day and he always looks at me like we’ve been apart for a year. If I have a patient in labor, he stays up all night, just in case I need something. And when there are no patients at night, when he holds me before I fall asleep, bad TV reception is the last thing on my mind. “Am I staying here? I came here because I believed I’d lost everything that mattered, and ended up finding everything I’ve ever wanted in the world. Yeah, Joey. I’m staying. Jack’s here. Besides, I belong here now. I belong to them. They belong to me.” *

In Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky details how reactivity and your temperament are also strong predictors of how stressed-out you are likely to be. Our sensitive high reactor can be compared to a neurotic “Type A” personality. Any little thing sets them off, and once they’re going it can be hours before they settle back down. It’s easy for a high reactor to stay soaked in stress hormones for hours on end, set off by an ever-compounding series of morning traffic, meetings, bosses, co-workers, and traffic on the way home. These people set themselves off, yes, but it’s in their nature to do so. Being effectively numb to the same pressures, low-reactors can handle much more without flinching. The low reactor isn’t a psychopath, as they experience emotions and react to life-events as anyone would, but the effects of stress aren’t pronounced. It takes an extraordinary event to provoke a response, and they’re much better at turning all the coping systems off after the fact. You’d be absolutely right if you guessed that these neural and psychological differences translate to different physical outcomes. Stress is stress. Your brain is the master controller, and it doesn’t care if the threat is a third-degree burn or you clenching your teeth for 16 straight hours because you don’t know how to relax. To the high reactor, intense exercise becomes just another log on the bonfire, whereas a low reactor may not even notice.

At the street level, Sugar Fair welcomed customers into a bright, child-like fantasy. The architecturally designed enchanted forest was awash in jewel tones, and gorgeous smells, and the waterfall of free-flowing chocolate. But it was the Dark Forest downstairs that had proved an unexpected money-spinner, an income stream that had helped keep them afloat through the precarious first year. Four nights a week, through a haze of purple smoke and bubbling cauldrons, Sylvie taught pre-booked groups how to make concoctions that would tease the senses, delight the mind... and knock people flat on their arse if they weren't careful. High percentage of alcohol. It was a mixology class with a lot of tricks and pyrotechnics. It had been Jay's idea to get a liquor license. "Pleasures of the mouth," he'd said at the time. "The holy trinity--- chocolate, coffee, and booze." With even her weekends completely blocked out, Sylvie had almost made a crack about forfeiting certain other pleasures of the mouth, but Jay had inherited a puritanical streak from his mother. Both their mouths looked like dried cranberries if someone made a sex joke. The sensuous, moody haven in the basement was a counterbalance to the carefully manufactured atmosphere upstairs. There were, after all, reasons to shy away from relentless cheer. Perhaps someone had just been through a breakup, or a family reunion. A really distressing haircut. Maybe they'd logged on to Twitter and realized half the population were a bunch of pricks. Or maybe the'd picked up the Metropolitan News and found Dominic De Vere indirectly thrashing their entire business aesthetic in a major London daily. Whatever the reason--- feeling a little stressed? A bit peeved? Annoyed as fuck? Welcome to the Dark Forest. Through the bakery, turn left, down the stairs.