Meaningful Beach Quotes

true love had seemed like the grand prize, the one thing that could weather any storm, save you from both drudgery and fear, and writing about it had felt like the single most meaningful gift I could ever give. And even if that part of my worldview was taking a brief sabbatical, it had to be true that sometimes, heartbroken women found their happy endings, their rain-falling, music-swelling moments of pure happiness.

Since the experiment began, dead beaked whales have been discovered stranded on beaches of the Gulf of California by senior marine biologists at the National Marine Fisheries Services, including several experts in beaked whales, the impacts of noise on marine mammals, and the stranding of marine mammals. These scientists, and others who care about whales, wrote letters to the expedition’s sponsors. Columbia University failed to meaningfully respond. The National Science Foundation’s response was to write a letter stating, “There is no evidence that there is any connection between the operations of the Ewing and the reported [sic] beached whales.

Anyone looking back at the log later, trying to piece together a mystery, would find nothing but times and dry entries. It was a lazy Sunday. What made it meaningful were not the facts or details, but the imperceptibles. Inner life. The smell of the beach grass and the feel of sand on a bathroom floor when changing out of a swimsuit. The heat of American summer. Line ten of the log read simply: 10:22 Condor ate second breakfast. It couldn’t capture the perfect toasting of the onion bagel or the saltiness of the fish in contrast with the thickness of cream cheese. It was time lost in a book—a journey of imagination, transportation—which to others simply looks like sitting or lying stomach-down on the rug in front of a summertime fire, legs bent at the knees, up ninety degrees, kicking absently, feet languid in the air.

In one of our early conversations, Bob said to me, "I like Einstein as a character, because everybody knows who he is." In a sense, we didn't need to tell an Einstein story because everybody who eventually saw our Einstein brought their own story with them. In the four months that we toured Einstein in Europe we had many occasions to meet with our audiences, and people occasionally would ask us what it "meant." But far more often people told us what it meant to them, sometimes even giving us plot elucidation and complete scenario. The point about Einstein was clearly not what it "meant" but that it was meaningful as generally experienced by the people who saw it. From the viewpoint of the creators, of course, that is exactly the way it was constructed to work. Though we made no attempt at all to tell a story, we did use dramaturgical devices to create a clearly paced overall dramatic shape. For instance, a "finale" is a dramaturgical device; an "epilogue" is another. Using contrasting sections, like a slow trial scene followed by a fast dance scene, is a dramaturgical device, and we used such devices freely. I am sure that the absence of direct connotative "meaning" made it all the easier for the spectator to personalize the experience by supplying his own special "meaning" out of his own experience, while the work itself remained resolutely abstract. As to the use of three visual schemes, or images, Bob often mentioned that he envisioned them in three distinct ways: (1) a landscape seen at a distance (the Field/Spaceship scenes); (2) still lifes seen at a middle distance (the Trial scenes); and (3) portraits seen as in a closeup (the Knee Plays). As these three perspectives rotated through the four acts of the work, they created the sequence of images in an ordered scale. Furthermore, the recurrence of the images implied a kind of quasi-development. For example, the sequence of Train scenes from the Act I, scene 1 Train, to the "night train" of Act II and finally the building which resembled in perspective the departing night train, presented that sequence of images in a reductive order (each one became less "train-like") and at the same time more focused and energized. The same process applies to the sequence of Trial scenes (ending with a bar of light representing the bed) as well as the Field/Spaceship, with the final scene in the interior of the spaceship serving as a kind of apocalyptic grand finale of the whole work. Each time an image reappeared, it was altered to become more abstract and, oddly enough, more powerful. The way these three sequences were intercut with each other, as well as with the portrait-scale Knee Plays, served to heighten the dramatic effect.

Talk to companions, family, locals, and new acquaintances about your writing, gently impressing upon them that keeping a journal is important to you. First, doing so will compel you to write, because if you’ve told them you’re working on something meaningful and they see you sunning yourself on the beach reading smut novels and trashy magazines all the time you’ll be embarrassed. Second, when you introduce yourself as a writer you’ll be treated with regard when seen writing. If you present the journal as something you love, people will see it as beloved and make space for it.

Based on the parts of this... this scene that are not covered in refuse, and the drawings you have done for me, I know you are an artist with talent. Maybe I have old-fashioned views, but I simply don't understand why you would spend your time creating something like this." He shrugged his shoulders. "The sort of art I am used to seeing is more..." I raised an eyebrow. "More what?" He bit his lip, as though searching for the right words. "Pleasant to look at, I suppose." He shrugged again. "Scenes from nature. Little girls wearing filly white dresses and playing beside riverbanks. Bowls of fruit." "This piece shows a beach and a lake," I pointed out. "It's a scene from nature." "But it's covered in refuse." I nodded. "My art combines objects I find with images I paint. Sometimes what I find and incorporate is literal trash. But I also feel that my art is more than just trash. It's meaningful. These pieces aren't just flat, lifeless images on canvas. They say something." "Oh." He came even closer to the landscapes, kneeling so he could peer at them up close. "And what does your art... say?" His nose was just a few inches from an old McDonald's Quarter Pounder wrapper I'd laminated to the canvas so it looked like it was rising out of Lake Michigan. I'd meant for it to represent capitalism's crushing stranglehold on the natural world. Also, it just sort of looked cool. But I decided to give him a broader explanation. "I want to create something memorable with my art. Something lasting. I want to give people who see my works an experience that won't fade away. Something that will stay with them long after they see it." He frowned skeptically. "And you accomplish that by displaying ephemera others throw away?" I was about to counter by telling him that even the prettiest painting in the fanciest museum faded from memory once the patrons went home. That by using things other people throw away, I took the ephemeral and make it permanent in a way no pretty watercolor ever could.

Aristotle, we must remember, was a doctor’s son. Although he was very young when his father died, his family were longtime members of the medical guild of the Asclepiades. Using one’s eyes and ears and sense of touch to diagnose ailments and complaints, and judge the course of a disease or its cure, was in a sense a family tradition. According to the great Greek doctor Galen,‡ Asclepid families also taught their sons dissection.8 So those walks along the beach were not idle time. They must have confirmed for Aristotle what he already suspected, that reason must be linked to the power of observation. Reason steps in after, not before, experience; it sorts our observations into meaningful patterns and arrives at a knowledge as certain and exact as anything in Plato’s Forms. Aristotle’s term for this knowledge of the world was episteme, which later Latin commentators translated as scientia, or science. Aristotle is the true father of science and scientific method, by which we still mean a methodical process of observation, classification, and discovery.

helped them find dignity in meaningful work,

A novel is like a mountain. Like Mount Rainier. You ever seen Mount Rainier? It's like you're looking at God. It's so gorgeous and dynamic and powerful and meaningful. Then as you walk toward it, Things change. At one point, it's not even a mountain anymore. There's an incline, but you don't see the whole thing. There are different levels. When you get to the top, you look out from the mountain and it's just as majestic because now you're looking from God's point of view. So the novel is a mountain. Now, the short story is an island --- some trees and a beach and a little creature running around. You go on the island, but then you realize that underneath it is a mountain, but it's just underwater, so you never see it. You have to describe the whole mountain, but only from the point of view of that island. Whatever detritus gets washed up, whatever the weather is there, whatever is happening underneath, you have to somehow give that to the reader without making it explicit.