“
[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.
”
”
Slavoj Žižek
“
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
”
”
Mary Schmich (Wear Sunscreen: A Primer for Real Life)
“
Too much of my life feels like this already- trying to recycle something old into something new and better, disguising someone else's trash as some fresh, shiny thing.
”
”
Jennifer Niven (Holding Up the Universe)
“
Imagination can't create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions... So when we thing we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don't you think it's depressing?
”
”
Tony Kushner (Millennium Approaches (Angels in America #1))
“
If you mail a rare stamp it becomes worthless. If you drink a rare bottle of wine, you're left with some recycling. But if you read a rare book it's still there, it's still valuable, and it's achieved the full measure of it's being. A book is to read, whether it's worth five pounds or five thousand pounds
”
”
Charlie Lovett (First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen)
“
That's really eco-friendly of you," Vee told Marcie. "Recycling Nora's old trash.
”
”
Becca Fitzpatrick (Crescendo (Hush, Hush, #2))
“
Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of, the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied only by the last words of the looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends, and a more-than minor life.
And then i screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers. And there's no sugar-coating it: She deserved better friends.
When she fucked up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified. into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And I could have done that, but I saw where it led for her. So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe in it spite of having lost her.
Beacause I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and everyone but herself and her mom in those last moments she spent as a person. I know that she forgives me for being dumb and sacred and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her. And here's how I know:
I thought at first she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something's meal. What was her-green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs-would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere.
I still think that, sometimes. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just a matter, and matter gets recycled.
But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirety. There is a part of her knowable parts. And that parts has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed. Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, One thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed.
And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself -those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be.
When adults say "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are.
We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Eidson's last words were: "It's very beautiful over there." I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.
”
”
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
“
History chews up sexually uncertain boys, and spits us out as recycled, generic greeting cards for lonely old men.
”
”
Andrew Smith (Grasshopper Jungle)
“
Creativity is fragile; if you don't nurture it, it can die, leaving you recycling old ideas and pretending they're fresh. It's a sure road to mediocrity.
”
”
Lee Silber (Time Management for the Creative Person)
“
The urge to leap across feminism to "human liberation" is a tragic and dangerous mistake. It deflects us from our real sources of vision, recycles us back into old definitions and structures, and continues to serve the purposes of the patriarchy, which will use "women's lib," as it contemptuously phrases it, only to buy more time for itself—as both capitalism and socialism are now doing. Feminism is a criticism and subversion of all patriarchal thought and institutions—not merely those currently seen as reactionary and tyrannical.
”
”
Adrienne Rich (On Lies, Secrets, and Silence. Selected Prose 1966-1978)
“
The devil doesn’t really have any new schemes, ideas, or initiatives. He keeps on recycling and reusing the same old temptations, adorning them in different attires.
”
”
Pedro Okoro (Crushing the Devil: Your Guide to Spiritual Warfare and Victory In Christ)
“
Sometimes it seemed that he'd said six or eight funny things in his life, and that what passed for his sense of humor would always depend on a skillful recycling of old material, over and over again.
”
”
Richard Yates (Young Hearts Crying)
“
The calcium in your bones came from a star. We are all made from recycled bits and pieces of the universe. This matters because origins matter.
For example, if you were born to a reigning monarch but kidnapped by the black market baby underground shortly after birth and sent to America where you were raised by common, unremarkable people from Ohio, and when you were in your thirties working as a humble UPS driver, dignitaries landed their helicopter on the roof of your crummy apartment building and informed you of their thirty-plus year search for you, His Royal Highness, the course of your life might change.
You know?
Our familial genetic origins -medical histories- inform us of medical conditions which exist in our families and when we know about these specific conditions, we can sometimes take certain actions to prevent them.
Which is why I think it’s important to consider that billions of years before we were students and mothers and dog trainers and priests, we were particles that would form into star after star after star until forever passed, and instead of a star what formed was life; simplistic, crude, miraculous.
And after another infinity, there we were.
And this is why for you, anything is possible.
Because you are made out of everything.
”
”
Augusten Burroughs (This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.)
“
Dipping into the archive is always an interesting, if sometimes unsettling, proposition. It often begins with anxiety, with the fear that the thing you want won't surface. But ultimately the process is a little like tapping into the unconscious, and can bring with it the ambivalent gratification of rediscovering forgotten selves.
Rather than making new pictures why can't I just recycle some of these old ones? Claim "found" photographs from among my boxes? And have this gesture signify "resistance to further production/consumption"? (96)
”
”
Moyra Davey (Long Life Cool White: Photographs and Essays)
“
Why was fabulousness important? The world was a scary, sad place and adornment was one of the only ways she knew to make herself and the people around her forget their troubles. That was why she had opened her store almost five years ago. Everyone who entered the little square white house with miniature Corinthian columns, cherub statues, and French windows seemed to leave carrying armloads of newly handmade and well spruced-up recycled vintage clothing, humming sixties girl-group songs, seventies glam and punk, eighties New Wave one-hit wonders, or nineties grunge, doing silly dances, and not caring what anyone thought.
Weetzie loved the old dresses she found and sold, because they had their own secret histories. She always wondered where, when, and how they had been worn. What they had seen. Old dresses were like old ladies.
”
”
Francesca Lia Block (Necklace of Kisses (Weetzie Bat, #6))
“
By the time these words are read, the centuries-old cedar, hemlock, and balsm of the cutblock known as Leah Block 2 will be a distant memory, long since processed into siding, two-by-fours, perhaps even the paper that has been recycled into the pages of this book.
”
”
John Vaillant (The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed)
“
We spend our days—and for some of us, nights—reviewing the past for errors and looking into the future to prevent making more. We debate decisions we’ve already made, recycle old concerns, indulge endless regrets, obsess over things we can’t control. It’s all in response to a constant stream of negative feelings and monkey chatter.
”
”
Jennifer Shannon (Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (How to Stop the Cycle of the Anxiety, Fear, and Worry))
“
The New Regime even recycled the old Republic’s buzzwords, collective, collaborative. Axiomatic to both was that a new species of humanity was emerging.
”
”
Jonathan Franzen (Purity)
“
All printing inks used in this edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac are soy-based. This product is recyclable. Consult local recycling regulations for the right way to do it.
”
”
Old Farmer's Almanac (The Old Farmer's Almanac 2015)
“
from "Semele Recycled"
But then your great voice rang out under the skies
my name!-- and all those private names
for the parts and places that had loved you best.
And they stirred in their nest of hay and dung.
The distraught old ladies chasing their lost altar,
and the seers pursuing my skull, their lost employment,
and the tumbling boys, who wanted the magic marbles,
and the runaway groom, and the fisherman's thirteen children,
set up such a clamor, with their cries of "Miracle!"
that our two bodies met like a thunderclap
in midday-- right at the corner of that wretched field
with its broken fenceposts and startled, skinny cattle.
We fell in a heap on the compost heap
and all our loving parts made love at once,
while the bystanders cheered and prayed and hid their eyes
and then went decently about their business.
And here is is, moonlight again; we've bathed in the river
and are sweet and wholesome once more.
We kneel side by side in the sand;
we worship each other in whispers.
But the inner parts remember fermenting hay,
the comfortable odor of dung, the animal incense,
and passion, its bloody labor,
its birth and rebirth and decay.
”
”
Carolyn Kizer
“
Lastly, making stuff from plastic – especially single-use plastic – is just so efficient that it makes recycling old stuff much less attractive. Compared to other materials it’s often a low-carbon way to make stuff.
”
”
Hannah Ritchie (Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet)
“
I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something’s meal. What was her—green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs—would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe ‘the afterlife’ is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable.
Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled. But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska’s genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.
Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself—those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, ‘Teenagers think they are invincible’ with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
”
”
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
“
In fact, Wen'an was the prefect location for the scrap-plastics trace: it was close, but not too close, to Beijing and Tianjin, two massive metropolises with lots of consumers and lots of factories in need of cheap raw materials. Even better, its traditional industry - farming - was disappearing as the region's once-plentiful streams and wells were run dry by the region's rampant, unregulated oil industry. So land was plentiful, and so were laborers desperate for a wage to replace the money lost when their fields died. As I hear these stories, I can't help but wonder: How much of the plastic that Wen'an recycles was made from the oil pumped from Wen'an's soil? Are all those old plastic bags blowing down Wen'an's streets ghosts of the fuel that used to run beneath them?
”
”
Adam Minter (Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade)
“
Her moral obligation
to keep our hearts entwined.
Her preeminent love,
smelling like life,
in a good way,
familiar like an ancient woodcut,
a private postcard in the midst of a crowd,
in an old T-shirt to soak up the memories,
committed to recycling life.
repairing the nucleus.
”
”
Brian D'Ambrosio (Fresh Oil and Loose Gravel: Road Poetry by Brian D'Ambrosio 1998-2008)
“
The "old school" of wastewater treatment, still embraced by most government regulators and many academics, considers water to be a vehicle for the routine transfer of waste from on place to another. It also considers the accompanying organic material to be of little or no value. The "new school", on the other hand, sees water as a dwindling, precious resource that should not be polluted with waste; organic materials are seen as resources that should be constructively recycled. My research for this chapter included reviewing hundreds of research papers on alternative wastewater systems. I was amazed at the incredible amount of time and money that has gone into studying how to clean the water we have polluted with human excrement. In all of the research papers, without exception, the idea that we should simply stop defecating in water was never suggested.
”
”
Joseph C. Jenkins (The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure)
“
The driver bumped his way through the door and plopped down Caitlyn’s “luggage.” Caitlyn watched Madame Snowe’s eyes go to it, widening as
she took it in. Caitlyn’s cheeks heated.
Her “luggage” was a Vietnam War-era army green duffel bag, bought for a dollar at a garage sale. Cloud-shaped moisture stains mottled its
faded surface, and jagged stitches of black carpet thread sealed a rip on one end, Caitlyn’s clumsy needlework giving the mended hole the look of
one of Frankenstein’s scars.
“Is that all you brought?” Greta asked.
Caitlyn nodded, wishing the floor would swallow her.
“Very good. You will have no trouble unpacking, and then you can burn your bag, heh?”
“Reduce, reuse, recycle!” Caitlyn said with false cheer. “We’re very big on living green in Oregon. Why buy a new suitcase when someone else’s
old duffel bag will do?”
“We’ll see that it gets … disposed of properly,
”
”
Lisa Cach (Wake Unto Me)
“
There is comfort in such accumulations, layers of lives, of years. Gardening tools, wheelbarrow, arousal cans, old bicycles, recycling bins, battered trash cans, cardboard boxes stacked in a corner, cracked clay pots, exiled kitchenware & furniture, antique television, dog food bowls. You could do an inventory of a household by all that has been worn out or excluded, exiled from it. You could do an inventory of a life.
”
”
Joyce Carol Oates
“
As you’re meditating, memories of something distressing that happened in the past may bubble up. It can be quite freeing to see all of that. But if you revisit the memory of something distressing over and over, rehashing what happened and obsessing on the story line, it becomes part of your static identity. You’re just strengthening your propensity to experience yourself as the one who was wronged, as the victim. You’re strengthening a preexisting propensity to blame others—your parents and anyone else—as the ones who wronged you. Continuing to recycle the old story line is a way of avoiding fundamental ambiguity. Emotions stay on and on when we fuel them with words. It’s like pouring kerosene on an ember to make it blaze. Without the words, without the repetitive thoughts, the emotions don’t last longer than one and a half minutes.
”
”
Pema Chödrön (Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change)
“
For three thousand years it had been the concent’s policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Anathem)
“
As noted in About ESC Electrol Specialties Company began fabricating CIP System components as a vendor to one of the nations largest suppliers of cleaning chemicals to the Dairy industry more than 50 years ago. This vendor was a major provider of the engineering services, components and skilled personnel required to design and install CIPable automaed processes, for dairies initialy, and later food and beverage processors. This vendor was actively involved with new facility construction, but more importantly, also developed and applied the methodos of applying such new technology equally well to "recycle old dairies" via rennovation projects planned to provide the exisitng facility increased capacity, efficiency and quality capabilities, and keep it running during the rennovation process. This vendor worked on a design and install" basis and used its own wsanitary welding crews, even Internationally, through the mid 70s.
”
”
John Franks
“
Because it was sexism, wasn’t it? Beatrice’s detractors never said it aloud, never authored op-eds that stated Beatrice shouldn’t rule because she’s a woman. They just criticized everything she did. If she wore a new dress, she was extravagant; if she recycled an old one, she had no style. If she was photographed holding a glass of wine, she was a lush; if she didn’t drink at an event, she was pregnant, or boring, or rude to her hosts. If she was caught in a photo unsmiling, then she wasn’t likable; if she smiled too broadly, she was trying too hard.
”
”
Katharine McGee (Rivals (American Royals #3))
“
There are hundreds of examples of highly functioning commons around the world today. Some have been around for centuries, others have risen in response to economic and environmental crises, and still others have been inspired by the distributive bias of digital networks. From the seed-sharing commons of India to the Potato Park of Peru, indigenous populations have been maintaining their lands and managing biodiversity through a highly articulated set of rules about sharing and preservation. From informal rationing of parking spaces in Boston to Richard Stallman’s General Public License (GPL) for software, new commons are serving to reinstate the value of land and labor, as well as the ability of people to manage them better than markets can. In the 1990s, Elinor Ostrom, the American political scientist most responsible for reviving serious thought about commoning, studied what specifically makes a commons successful. She concluded that a commons must have an evolving set of rules about access and usage and that it must have a way of punishing transgressions. It must also respect the particular character of the resource being managed and the people who have worked with that resource the longest. Managing a fixed supply of minerals is different from managing a replenishing supply of timber. Finally, size and place matter. It’s easier for a town to manage its water supply than for the planet to establish water-sharing rules.78 In short, a commons must be bound by people, place, and rules. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, it’s not an anything-goes race to the bottom. It is simply a recognition of boundaries and limits. It’s pooled, multifaceted investment in pursuit of sustainable production. It is also an affront to the limitless expansion sought by pure capital. If anything, the notion of a commons’ becoming “enclosed” by privatization is a misnomer: privatizing a commons breaks the boundaries that protected its land and labor from pure market forces. For instance, the open-source seed-sharing networks of India promote biodiversity and fertilizer-free practices among farmers who can’t afford Western pesticides.79 They have sustained themselves over many generations by developing and adhering to a complex set of rules about how seed species are preserved, as well as how to mix crops on soil to recycle its nutrients over centuries of growing. Today, they are in battle with corporations claiming patents on these heirloom seeds and indigenous plants. So it’s not the seed commons that have been enclosed by the market at all; rather, the many-generations-old boundaries have been penetrated and dissolved by disingenuously argued free-market principles.
”
”
Douglas Rushkoff (Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity)
“
The past folds accordion-like into the present. Different media have different event horizons—for the written word, three millennia; for recorded sound, a century and a half—and within their time frames the old becomes as accessible as the new. Yellowed newspapers come back to life. Under headings of 50 Years Ago and 100 Years Ago, veteran publications recycle their archives: recipes, card-play techniques, science, gossip, once out of print and now ready for use. Record companies rummage through their attics to release, or re-release, every scrap of music, rarities, B-sides, and bootlegs. For a certain time, collectors, scholars, or fans possessed their books and their records. There was a line between what they had and what they did not. For some, the music they owned (or the books, or the videos) became part of who they were. That line fades away. Most of Sophocles' plays are lost, but those that survive are available at the touch of a button. Most of Bach's music was unknown to Beethoven; we have it all—partitas, cantatas, and ringtones. It comes to us instantly, or at light speed. It is a symptom of omniscience. It is what the critic Alex Ross calls the Infinite Playlist, and he sees how mixed is the blessing: "anxiety in place of fulfillment, and addictive cycle of craving and malaise. No sooner has one experience begun than the thought of what else is out there intrudes." The embarrassment of riches. Another reminder that information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom.
”
”
James Gleick (The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood)
“
I’m sure they won’t,” Cyrus agreed. “But the fate of the free world is at stake here. We can’t put it on hold so you can spend the week with your mommy. Your spring break is now officially Operation Tiger Shark.” “Tiger Shark?” Erica asked, impressed. “I thought the CIA had run out of cool names like that.” This was true. The CIA had been naming operations for several decades, and the good options were running low. Our last mission had been dubbed Pungent Muskrat. “I made an executive decision,” Cyrus replied. “I’m not initiating ops with names like Mangy Weasel or Scrawny Chicken anymore. It’s bad for morale. So I recycled an old mission name. Now go get packing. I want you moving out at oh-two-hundred.” “That’s two in the morning!” I exclaimed. “I know when oh-two-hundred is,” Cyrus snapped.
”
”
Stuart Gibbs (Spy School Goes South)
“
Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable.
Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow.
And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness.
The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.
”
”
Ashim Shanker (Don't Forget to Breathe (Migrations, Volume I))
“
Sam didn't need to hear the rest of it--- which was that before heading to the recycling center I planned to watch a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For research--- or so I told myself. The show had to be wildly inaccurate when it came to vampire details, but after two days of processing what had happened with Frederick the other night, my panic over the situation was fading. And my curiosity was growing.
What was it like to be an immortal who drank human blood? Did Frederick's heart beat? What were the rules governing how he lived and ate... and died? It wasn't much, but without getting back in touch with Frederick himself, Buffy was about all I had for guidance. It had to be more accurate representation of vampires than Twilight or those old Anne Rice novels, right? Plus, it was an enjoyable show.
The fact that Buffy also showed romantic human-vampire relationships had absolutely nothing to do with my interest, of course. Neither did the fact that I hadn't been able to get Frederick's pleading eyes, or his assurances that he would never hurt me, out of my head since the morning I first woke up on Sam's couch.
”
”
Jenna Levine (My Roommate Is a Vampire (My Vampires, #1))
“
I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something’s meal. What was her—green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs—would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe “the afterlife” is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled. But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska’s genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed. Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself—those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail. So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison’s last words were: “It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.
”
”
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
“
I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something's meal. What was her -- green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs -- would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled.
But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.
Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself -- those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
”
”
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
“
I am dreaming of happy Pandas. A whole field full of happy Pandas. I am beside myself. I am entirely myself. I am going to set myself on fire. Just you wait and see.
I will destroy. You will obey. That's the way it has to be. You'll make the lemonade and I'll ensure that no other lemonade stand stands in our way. We will wear terrific Panda suits. We will have a secret hand shake. We'll stick to the plan. I will destroy. You will obey. That's the way it's going to have to be. Pouting about it won't change anything. Pouting about it will only make you look like an unhappy Panda and we can't be having that. So you should think before you speak. You should consider your options before you decide to become an unhappy Panda. Because you don't want to know what happens to Pandas that aren't happy. So you'd best be careful.
Don't worry though. This is just us talking. This is just us coming together at the head. Like Siamese twins, like two happy peas in a pod. You would not like it if we were to do the other routine. There are no happy Pandas to be had in that one. Not at all. No mention of Pandas whatsoever. Just unpleasantness that I would rather avoid. So keep smiling. Always remember to keep smiling. Whatever will be, will be. There is nothing more pathetic than a sore loser. So keep smiling. Everything will take care of itself. Thank goodness.
I'm tired now. I am going to go to bed. I don't much feel like being your friend anymore. The good old days are gone. Best to get on board with the depravity of the here and now. The world consumes, the world revolves, the world will someday come to and end. If not by us, then pulverized by the sun. The mysteries of the universe revealed with no time to study the data and reach an outcome, the sun will go out and all creatures great and small will be helpless against the unknowns of life. So why are you so worried? Why don't you go have some drinks, get laid, get back, get something. After everything has been done, been bought, sold, produced, consumed, recycled, re-packaged, and re-sold, you will have gained nothing by floundering about trying to change things that cannot be changed. The little things exist only so that the important ones never get touched upon. That's why you can wear leather shoes and, at the same time, refuse to eat beef. Because we are all, every one of us, ridiculous. And we've elected you our leader.
I am going to go lay in bed and wait for the hands of impossibility to come strangle me. I am going to smile at my ceiling and sing the song of our undoing. I will wear my Panda pajamas. I will think of you often when I get to where it is that I'm going. Everything will be fine. Just you wait and see. Just you wait and see.
”
”
Matthew Good
“
Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99: Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.
I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.
You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4:00 pm on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead; sometimes you’re behind; the race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you wanna do with your life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees; you’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40 -- maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either -- your choices are half chance; so are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body; use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance.
even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography, in lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise; politicians will philander; you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund; maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
Baz Luhrmannk, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1996)
”
”
Baz Luhrmann (Romeo & Juliet: The Contemporary Film, The Classic Play)
“
dirt lane ran behind these old double lots built for beach cottages early in the last century. Back then not every house had flush toilets. A honey wagon came around at nights to maintain the outhouses. Now transients tracked through the old lanes trash-picking and collecting recyclables from the dumpsters.
”
”
Mar Preston (On Behalf of the Family (A Detective Dave Mason Mystery Book 3))
“
There is no word to describe exactly what the High Line is to the non-architects among us, nor the collective reframing process required to see beyond its dingy path. 24 The promenade’s landscaping and minimal architectural interference is meant to find a balance between “melancholia and exuberance,” Diller told me. “Whatever that intermediate thing is, it’s ineffable and is kind of what makes the High Line so popular.” “Part of what is so successful about the High Line is that it looks like it’s about nothing,” Diller said. Everything is prohibited on the promenade but the act of moving forward or stopping to look at the vistas from that vantage point. A dedicated place for strolling, where there are no dogs, no bicycles, or wheeled objects of any kind, it is “radically old fashioned,” designed to let us do what we ordinarily don’t, like taking time to linger and gaze at passing traffic. There is even a “sunken overlook” viewing station with movie-theater-style rows of descending seats and a window instead of a screen to see Tenth Avenue’s traffic instead of a featured film. Looking at the path beneath our feet and the view before us are the High Line’s activities. The High Line’s path will extend up the island in nearly interminable stages, “perpetually unfinished.” 25 As if to underscore it, on the west-facing side of the High Line, with views of the skyline and the Hudson River, sculptor Anatsui erected a monumental mural, Broken Bridge II, a three-dimensional painting the size of a city block made of flattened, dull-finish tin and mirrors with expert placement and hours of scaling. The vista in its upper reaches blends sky and land “in such a way that you do not know where mirrors end and sky begins.” 26 Anatsui, known for his radiant, monumental murals with a unique luster, fashioned as they are out of recycled metal bottle caps from his studio in Nigeria, starts his work from an approximate center with exquisite discards. He then builds outward, unscrolling the once-scattered shards so that they shine in their new form, as if they could unfurl to the full extent of vision.
”
”
Sarah Lewis (The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery)
“
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 97 percent of postconsumer textile waste is recyclable. Yet only 20 percent gets recycled because the consumer simply does not know it can be. When I was a child, I remember watching a wooden mill turn old bed linens into beautiful paper sheets at the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, but I had forgotten about the class field trip until today. Throughout the world, a small portion of worn-out textiles is currently being converted into rags for the construction, painting, and automobile industries; another percentage is shredded into flocking fibers for insulating, padding, upholstering, or soundproofing purposes. But the recyclers wish they could put their hands on all textile discards, including the extras that we simply throw away or hoard for the what-if. Resale giant Goodwill, along with mobile recycling bins, accept both natural and man-made fibers of any brand for recycling. Those items that have holes, rips, and stains beyond repair can be boxed, labeled “rags,” and donated to participating locations, where they are then dispatched to textile recyclers.
”
”
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
“
Nature is constantly remaking you, yet you hold onto old energy through your emotions. Your mind, your thoughts, aren't physical and nature can't heal or recycle them. Only you can do that ... when you're willing to let go of them.
”
”
Constance O'Day-Flannery (Colliding Forces (The Foundation, #2))
“
Is it in working condition? Is it expired? Old cosmetics provide havens for bacterial growth and can become health hazards, just as combs with missing teeth can hurt your hair. Recycle the former through the Return to Origins Recycling Program (at any Origins location; see Resources) and the latter with your number 1 plastics
”
”
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
“
fasting also stimulates growth hormone, which signals the production of some new snazzy cell parts, giving our bodies a complete renovation. Since it triggers both the breakdown of old cellular parts and the creation of new ones, fasting may be considered one of the most potent anti-aging methods in existence. Autophagy also plays an important role in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is characterized by the abnormal accumulation of amyloid beta (Aß) proteins in the brain, and it’s believed that these accumulations eventually destroy the synaptic connections in the memory and cognition areas. Normally, clumps of Aß protein are removed by autophagy: the brain cell activates the autophagosome, the cell’s internal garbage truck, which engulfs the Aß protein targeted for removal and excretes it, so it can be removed by the blood and recycled into other protein or turned into glucose, depending upon the body’s needs. But in Alzheimer’s disease, autophagy is impaired and the Aß protein remains inside the brain cell, where eventual buildup will result in the clinical syndromes of Alzheimer’s disease. Cancer is yet another disease that may be a result of disordered autophagy. We’re learning that mTOR plays a role in cancer biology, and mTOR inhibitors have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of various cancers. Fasting’s role in inhibiting mTOR, thereby stimulating autophagy, provides an interesting opportunity to prevent cancer’s development. Indeed, some leading scientists, such as Dr. Thomas Seyfried, a professor of biology at Boston College, have proposed a yearly seven-day water-only fast for this very reason.
”
”
Jason Fung (The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting)
“
Back in 1990, the futurist George Gilder demonstrated his prescience when he wrote in his book Microcosm, “The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth in the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.” Just over twenty years later, in 2011, the venture capitalist (and Netscape cofounder) Marc Andreessen validated Gilder’s thesis in his Wall Street Journal op-ed “Why Software Is Eating the World.” Andreessen pointed out that the world’s largest bookstore (Amazon), video provider (Netflix), recruiter (LinkedIn), and music companies (Apple/ Spotify/ Pandora) were software companies, and that even “old economy” stalwarts like Walmart and FedEx used software (rather than “things”) to drive their businesses. Despite—or perhaps because of—the growing dominance of bits, the power of software has also made it easier to scale up atom-based businesses as well. Amazon’s retail business is heavily based in atoms—just think of all those Amazon shipping boxes piled up in your recycling bin! Amazon originally outsourced its logistics to Ingram Book Company, but its heavy investment in inventory management systems and warehouses as it grew turned infrastructure
”
”
Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
“
and Boyer has to be on the Jack Nicholson end of the old routine in which he tries to order a slice of cheese that comes only with the apple pie. (Why did no one mention that Five Easy Pieces [1970], with its “hold the chicken salad, just give me the toast” routine, was recycling old-movie dialogue that had appeared in many films?)
”
”
Jeanine Basinger (The Star Machine)
“
If, for example, you and I were anteaters, rather than two people sitting in the corner of a bar, I might feel more comfortable with your silence, with your motionless hands holding your glass, with your glazed fish eyes fixing now on my balding head and now on my navel, we might be able to understand each other better in a meeting of restless snouts sniffing halfheartedly at the concrete for nonexistent insects, we might come together, under cover of darkness, in acts of sexual coitus as sad as Lisbon nights, when the Neptunes in the lakes slough off the mud and slime and scan the deserted squares with blank, eager, rust-colored eyes. Perhaps you would finally tell me about yourself. Perhaps behind your Cranach brow there lies sleeping a secret fondness for rhinoceroses. Perhaps, if you felt my body, you would discover that I had been suddenly transformed into a unicorn, and I would embrace you, and you would flap startled arms, like a butterfly transfixed by a pin, your voice grown husky with desire. We would buy tickets for the train that travels around the zoo, from creature to creature, with its clockwork engine, an escapee from some provincial haunted castle, and we would wave, as we passed, at the grotto-cum-crib of those recycled carpets—the polar bears. We would observe with an ophthalmological eye the baboons' anal conjunctivitis, like eyelids inflamed with combustible hemorrhoids. We would kiss outside the lions' den, where the lions—moth-eaten old overcoats—would curl their lips to reveal toothless gums. I would stroke your breasts in the oblique shade cast by the foxes, you would buy me an ice cream on a stick from the clowns' enclosure, where they, eyebrows permanently arched, exchanged blows to the tragic accompaniment of a saxophone. And that way we would have recovered a little of the childhood that belongs to neither of us and that insists on whizzing down the children's slide with a laugh that reaches us now as an occasional faint, almost angry echo.
”
”
António Lobo Antunes (Os Cus de Judas)
“
Superheroes are the story of America. They are the means America uses to tell its story, and it sees itself as the ultimate superhero. America is the most mythical country in the world because, ironically, it has the least myths of its own. America isn’t an inventive country, it’s a re-inventive country. It’s always stealing from everywhere else and repurposing it. Why is Hollywood in the USA and not in Europe? It’s because America is a laboratory for reinventing and representing old stories, for continually mythologizing itself, in order to establish for itself a set of myths such as other, much more historical nations, have naturally. But America is now running out of stories, and is plundering its own stories that it has already told so often. How many times do we need to see Spiderman’s Origin Story, or Superman’s, or Batman’s? The same old material is being endlessly recycled. America has run out of stories, and that’s why it’s going into a steep decline. It can’t inflate itself any more. The wells of its imagination have run dry.
”
”
David Sinclair (Superheroes and Presidents: How Absurd Stories Have Poisoned the American Mind)
“
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”
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Cash For Cars Removal - How Can It Save You Money?
“
And so they did. Over the next several weeks, the garden friends collected trash that they found lying around—from soda cans that had tumbled out of the recycling bin, to a weather-beaten cardboard box, to an old baseball cap that was the perfect size for a mosquito-sized soda fountain. The friends used this junk to construct tiny buildings. They decorated their new business with colorful leaves and flower petals, and they used rocks and pebbles for tables and chairs. Wiggly worked hard at making tunnels in the dirt for his new park, and even Snarky caught on to the enthusiasm and collected shiny pebbles for his shop. By the time they were finished, Garden Town had come to be—a tiny town with a soda fountain, a park, a restaurant, and a pebble shop. Wiggly Worm and his friends had proved that, with a little hard work and determination, it’s possible to make your dreams come true! Just for Fun Activity Collect old containers and other trash-bound items in your house. With a little imagination (and some craft supplies), I bet you can make a pretty cool Garden Town of your own! Glue the town to a piece of poster
”
”
Arnie Lightning (Wiggly the Worm)
“
As a guide, your HDL level should be equal to or higher than your triglyceride level, which basically signifies that you’re recycling more fat than is being stored. But during our current 365-day growth cycle, the vast majority of people have the exact opposite ratio.
”
”
Steven R. Gundry (The Longevity Paradox: How to Die Young at a Ripe Old Age (The Plant Paradox, #4))
“
Her moral obligation
to keep our hearts entwined.
Her preeminent love,
smelling like life,
in a good way,
familiar like an ancient woodcut,
a private postcard in the midst of a crowd,
in an old T-shirt to soak up the memories,
committed to recycling life,
repairing the nucleus.
”
”
Brian D'Ambrosio
“
My mom always used old newspapers to clean the outside of windows. This was way back before recycling was common, so it wasn't done for any "green" reason except it was cheaper than using paper towels.
”
”
Allen Francis (Naturally Clean Home: How To Clean Your Home with non toxic Green Products: The Complete Guide to DIY Products)
“
A massive bookshelf stood behind a deep burgundy desk that was better fit for a Fortune 500 company CEO than a twelve year old. There was a beautiful globe next to it, with Old English writing on it. It looked at least two and a half centuries old. The windows were frosted, the desk lamp was green and the leaning pile of papers on the desk looked like the recycling pastime of an obsessive compulsive stenographer. To the left was a beautiful oil canvas in which a small figure had been drawn on top of a mountain as he clamored towards the heavens while a lemon yellow sun hung on top of it. The arms were like a V reaching for the sky and in the foreground were no less than thirty bodies strewn across the basin in a sea of maroon below. “That was a gift from Edward Louis,” said the voice of the boy from behind Nathaniel. The young man hadn’t been frightened; he was more impressed that the child vampire had slipped in without allowing any noise from the hall to enter with him. “There was a time when he called me King Jeremy the Wicked. Mostly it was an endless jab since I wasn’t much for battles or slaughter. I might add that like many of you humans, I’d rather not know where my food comes from.
”
”
J.D. Estrada (Only Human)
“
...some people here seem to have stepped through a time-warp -- old Romans being recycled with a mere change of costume.
”
”
Umberto Bartolomeo
“
Everything thrown away in Cairo, every soiled rag, old newspaper, or hunk of stale bread, began an unseen journey from the moment it was thrown in the trash. The Zabbaleen were a community made up mainly of Coptic Christians who eked out a meager existence collecting and disposing of the city’s waste. They generally performed this service for free, making a living through recycling. Invisible to mostCairenes, they lived on vast garbage dumps on the city fringe. Researching a story, Alex visited one of their settlements.
”
”
Dan Eaton (The Secret Gospel)
“
I took a deep, overly exaggerated breath, the sort of over-the-top gesture that was filmed for commercials about scented laundry detergent, but in this case was my way of trying to absorb every molecule of my old normal life. I loved the smell of the living room, the kitchen, Jenna's recycling porch, the cupboards, and the basement laundry room. I loved everything, and it seemed to love me back. It was as if my heart had grown to three times its normal size, and it could now hold the specialness of every person who crossed my path; it could track how phenomenal every scent, sound, taste, or texture was. Everything was beautiful, even if it was just the laundry that I'd pulled out of the dryer, still warm, and hugged like a small, lost child.
”
”
Dee Williams
“
In the infinity of life where I am, all is perfect, whole, and complete, and yet life is ever changing. There is no beginning and no end, only a constant cycling and recycling of substance and experiences. Life is never stuck or static or stale, for each moment is ever new and fresh. I am one with the very Power that created me, and this Power has given me the power to create my own circumstances. I rejoice in the knowledge that I have the power of my own mind to use in any way I choose. Every moment of life is a new beginning point as we move from the old. This moment is a new point of beginning for me right here and right now. All is well in my world.
”
”
Louise L. Hay (You Can Heal Your Life)
“
Rapamycin works at a fundamental level of cell biology. In the early 1990s, scientists at Novartis’s predecessor, Sandoz, discovered that a rapamycin molecule inhibits a key cellular pathway regulating growth and metabolism. This pathway was eventually dubbed “target of rapamycin,” or TOR, and it’s found in everything from yeast to humans (it’s known as mTOR in mammals). MTOR is like the circuit breaker in a factory: When it’s activated, the cell grows and divides, consuming nutrients and producing proteins. When mTOR is turned down, the “factory” switches into more of a conservation mode, as the cell cleans house and recycles old proteins via a process called autophagy. One reason caloric restriction extends life span in animals, researchers believe, is because it slows down this mTOR pathway and cranks up autophagy. Rapamycin does the same thing, only without the gnawing hunger. “Really what rapamycin is doing is tapping into the body’s systems for dealing with reduced nutrition,” says Brian Kennedy, chief executive officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif. “We’ve evolved over billions of years to be really good at that. When things are good, we’re going to grow and make babies. And when things are not so good, we go into a more stress-resistant mode, so we survive until the next hunt. And it just so happens that stress resistance is good for aging.
”
”
Anonymous
“
If we direct our intention toward doing (when possible) that which seems meaningful right now and noticing that any outcome is enough, we might discover a terribly obvious yet effective strategy for perpetual contentment.
Of course to do this—to open ourselves up to changing and living according to the meaning of the present month or moment—is a frightening proposition. If we do, we will surely witness our tastes and whims recycle and transform. We will watch as our personalities modify in subtle ways. And although a small number of passions might stay with us throughout our lives, many more will certainly fall away or be replaced. In other words, to admit that in this second I am not a static being is to admit that I will be something different tomorrow, something unknown a year from now, and possibly something unrecognizable to myself in a decade.
This notion is uncomfortable because it forces us to countenance the passing of time, the fading of past selves, our eventual physical death. To change is to vacate the past and move ever-closer to the end of our story. It’s no wonder that we bury our proverbial talons in the interests, attributes, memories, and tendencies of our past selves and insist that “who we are” has long been established.
But what might we become if we accept that, in the grammar of the universe, our nature is verb-like, transitory, ever-moving? We might become anything. The possibilities are endless and exciting.
It seems natural to hold tightly onto the past. We tend to feel that if don’t have the past, we don’t have anything. Our pasts provide all of the context with which we are equipped to navigate the present. Without our memories and stories, we would indeed be directionless and alone. But it seems that we often overcompensate, desperately clinging to the “good old days”, trying to relive them in our minds, and simultaneously attempting to freeze the present moment, to capture the past before it becomes the past. This latter point can be plainly observed in our modern tendency to photograph even the most mundane of moments and to record hours of video that we’ll never revisit.
But if we spend significant amounts of time trying to immortalize and live vicariously through the past, we may relinquish a measure of ability to see the possibilities of the present and future.
We may cease to fully capitalize on the surrounding opportunities for novel experience, reflection, and appreciation. We may eschew the potential to become a marvelously different-yet-somehow-still-the-same version of ourselves.
”
”
Jordan Bates
“
Tieken has suggested, on the basis of the problems we have outlined, that all the Sangam poems in the major anthologies were composed to order by poets who were perfectly aware of the fictive nature of their subject (tuṟai) and its context. Thus eighth- or ninth-century poets at the Pandya court, in Tieken’s reconstruction, deliberately composed poems with an internal speaker addressing a far more ancient hero or patron—as if a poet today were to adopt the persona of, say, Christopher Marlowe writing verses for Queen Elizabeth. But there is no need to conjure up such a scenario, with early-medieval court poets busy composing thousands of poems deliberately retrojected into the distant past, using conventional themes as well as invented materials meant to bring these ancient kings and bards to life. Is it not far more economical to imagine a process whereby the poems, many of them very old, all of them self-conscious literary efforts to begin with, survived through a slow process of recording, editorial accretion, and explication? Moreover, the relation of poem to colophon must have been, in many cases, far more intimate than any linear development could account for. There may well have been cases where the text and the colophon are, in a special sense, mutually determining—that is, cases where the poetic situation at work in the poem fits and informs the colophon long before the latter was recorded. Again, there is no need to assume that the “fictive” nature of the colophon means it is false. Quite the contrary may be the case: poem and colophon, though certainly distinct, usually share a single mental template. Fiction often offers a much closer approximation to truth than what passes for fact can give us. It’s also possible that some of the colophons are arbitrary editorial interventions long after the period of composition—that is, that well-known, ancient names were recycled by creative editors. We need to keep an open, critical mind as we investigate these materials.
”
”
David Dean Shulman (Tamil: A Biography)
“
Leave the Trash Behind"
(Verse 1)
I've been down that road, where the past lingers on,
Holding onto memories, till the break of dawn.
But I've learned my lesson, won't repeat that crime,
When you take out the trash, don't go digging back through it, it's time.
(Chorus)
I'm moving on, got my sights set on the new,
I've cleared the clutter, my skies are turning blue.
I won't be a part of letting you destroy me,
I'm leaving the past, where it's meant to be.
(Verse 2)
You can't recycle, what's meant to stay gone,
Old habits, old hurts, it's all been withdrawn.
I'm setting my boundaries, I'm drawing the line,
When you take out the trash, it's a sign.
(Bridge)
I'm not a collector of yesterday's news,
I'm an architect of the life I choose.
No more digging through what's been declined,
I'm building a future, one day at a time.
(Chorus)
I'm moving on, got my sights set on the new,
I've cleared the clutter, my skies are turning blue.
I won't be a part of letting you destroy me,
I'm leaving the past, where it's meant to be.
(Outro)
So here's to the clean slates, the fresh starts,
To the unburdened hearts, playing brand new parts.
I'm walking away, from the mess, the grind,
'Cause when you take out the trash, you leave it behind.
”
”
James Hilton-Cowboy
“
A very old wisteria rose snaking over an arbour. Nearby were tiny roses on a wall, mere tufty buttons that smelled of one's childhood in a horse-pace village. Thin bricks were set on edge around a bed of irises, bricks which had been stamped on by Tudor horses, when they had formed the floor of the old stables. Traces of them could be seen also in the path in the churchyard, like the backs of small old books packed in a bookshelf.
”
”
Adrian Bell (A Countryman’s Summer Notebook)
“
Austick Car Removal Bondi Beach is a cash for cars Bondi Beach service, collecting and recycling defective second hand cars as well as those that have been crashed, and give you Bondi cash for cars. As used car buyers and car scrappers, we also offer scrap car removal Eastern Suburbs service on top of the cash for damaged cars, so you won’t have to drag the junk to car wreckers or a scrap yard yourself. Our cash for car Eastern Suburbs initiative is supported by our network of recycling centres, all licensed to collect and recycle cars, whether they’re faulty, outdated or damaged by accident. When you’re ready to let go of your car for cash, Eastern Suburbs has Austick’s old car removal service. Give us a call and get cash for unwanted cars.
”
”
Austick Car Removal Bondi Beach
“
Recycling tip: Old telephone books make great address books. Just cross out the names of people you don’t know.” —Anonymous wiseguy
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”
Ed Morrow (Declutter Anything: A Room-by-Room Guide to Cleaning Your Home and Simplifying Your Life)
“
The artisanal firearm right now being used as punctuation is called a Donnerbüchse, which is to say a thunder gun, and it is basically a weaponized recycler. It is a cone with bang bang at the back and an open mouth at the front and you put any old crap you happen to have in and then pull the trigger and all your chicken bones or nails fly out and rip pieces off whoever is in your way. Many people who are shot with one of these things who do not sustain fatal initial damage are killed by the very many fucked-up infections they contract in unexpected body parts because that is what happens when you get shot with a chicken carcass and a bag of nails. Another way of thinking about a Donnerbüchse is that it is a handheld unidirectional pipe bomb.
”
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Aidan Truhen (Seven Demons)
“
I chose Grandma Prisbrey, an old lady who built a village out of recycled garbage in the seventies before upcycling was cool, so I figured no one would care enough about my Californian to really pay attention to me.
”
”
Victoria Piontek (Better With Butter)
“
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.
”
”
Jenna Levine (My Roommate Is a Vampire (My Vampires, #1))
“
Instead of making new proteins and undergoing cell division, the cell goes into a more fuel-efficient and stress-resistant mode, activating an important cellular recycling process called autophagy, which means “self-eating” (or better yet, “self-devouring”). Autophagy represents the catabolic side of metabolism, when the cell stops producing new proteins and instead begins to break down old proteins and other cellular structures into their amino acid components, using the scavenged materials to build new ones. It’s a form of cellular recycling, cleaning out the accumulated junk in the cell and repurposing it or disposing of it.
”
”
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
“
Autophagy is essential to life. If it shuts down completely, the organism dies. Imagine if you stopped taking out the garbage (or the recycling); your house would soon become uninhabitable. Except instead of trash bags, this cellular cleanup is carried out by specialized organelles called lysosomes, which package up the old proteins and other detritus, including pathogens, and grind them down (via enzymes) for reuse. In addition, the lysosomes also break up and destroy things called aggregates, which are clumps of damaged proteins that accumulate over time. Protein aggregates have been implicated in diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, so getting rid of them is good; impaired autophagy has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease–related pathology and also to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
”
”
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
“
Much of medieval literature is what Lewis, in one scholarly article, refers to as “traditional poetry.” Certain poems, such as the Iliad or the poems of Thomas Malory, are not individual acts of inspiration, but rather are more the works of a storyteller who, repeating the essential plot line, weaves new characters, themes, descriptions, or details into the basic outline he inherited, a kind of literary recycling. Lewis had analyzed, in particular, the Arthurian legends, which had been repeated, retold, translated, updated, and modified. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, they tended to become accumulations of the techniques and additions of all previous editions rather than a unique and unrepeatable literary vision. Lewis felt that critics in his age would dismiss an author as “derivative” and “unoriginal” who “merely” repeats what has been said before, or who does not invent his or her own personal style. But the greatest authors of the medieval period were just this: shapers, composers, and recyclers of old materials. Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Malory borrowed and translated, but also mended, updated, and altered. They wrote traditional poetry in the sense that they felt it their chief task to dress old stories in new garb. In other words, by adopting this medieval conception of the art of composition, Lewis could liberate himself from the need to be “original.
”
”
Jason M. Baxter (The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind)
“
In My Stroke of Insight, the brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s book about her recovery from a massive stroke, she explains the physiological mechanism behind emotion: an emotion like anger that’s an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it’s triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that’s all. When it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it’s because we’ve chosen to rekindle it. The fact of the shifting, changing nature of our emotions is something we could take advantage of. But do we? No. Instead, when an emotion comes up, we fuel it with our thoughts, and what should last one and a half minutes may be drawn out for ten or twenty years. We just keep recycling the story line. We keep strengthening our old habits.
”
”
Pema Chödrön (Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change)
“
When I ask consumers (as I frequently do) what they do with their ‘old’ clothes – I use the term ‘old’ with caution – their answers are upbeat and cheerily green: ‘I recycle them,’ or ‘I donate them to a charity.’ We have a tendency to overvalue or talk up the items that we give away: people will remark on how they’ve given up a ‘very good skirt’ or a ‘top quality piece’. They appear to expect to be walking down the street the following Thursday and to see their skirt or jacket occupying pride of place on the central mannequin in the window of their local charity shop. This is highly unlikely: only around 10 per cent412 of UK donations, the ‘cream’, will actually be retailed through the shops (these make up the most valuable donations to the charities). Most are likely to be found somewhere on a 10,000-mile journey. We are back to salaula.
”
”
Lucy Siegle (To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World?)
“
I guess I was dimly aware—way out there on the periphery of my consciousness—of what I was doing to the poor abused corpus of old mother earth, and I did recycle (when I got around to it, which was maybe twice a year), and I thought a lot about packaging. I
”
”
T. Coraghessan Boyle (A Friend of the Earth)
“
Outside the man who strolls up and down the plaza selling yo-yos stops at a bench to tighten his shoes. He is your city's version of the dandy in the double-breasted suit who roots through the garbage scavenging for recyclables, or the old couple with sombreros and ukuleles who sit in the park singing songs about their sex life — recognized by everybody, the object of a thousand jokes, but so lasting a feature of the landscape that they inspire as much affection as anyone you could mention.
”
”
Kevin Brockmeier (The View from the Seventh Layer)
“
Here are the ominous parallels. Our universities are strongholds of German philosophy disseminating every key idea of the post-Kantian axis, down by now to old-world racism and romanticist technology-hatred. Our culture is modernism worn-out but recycled, with heavy infusions of such Weimarian blends as astrology and Marx, or Freud and Dada, or “humanitarianism” and horror-worship, along with five decades of corruption built on this kind of base. Our youth activists, those reared on the latest viewpoints at the best universities, are the pre-Hitler youth movement resurrected (this time mostly on the political left and addicted to drugs). Our political parties are the Weimar coalition over again, offering the same pressure-group pragmatism, and the same kind of contradiction between their Enlightenment antecedents and their statist commitments. The liberals, more anti-ideological than the moderate German left, have given up even talking about long-range plans and demand more controls as a matter of routine, on a purely ad hoc basis. The conservatives, much less confident than the nationalist German right, are conniving at this routine and apologizing for the remnants of their own tradition, capitalism (because of its clash with the altruist ethics)—while demanding government intervention in or control over the realms of morality, religion, sex, literature, education, science. Each of these groups, observing the authoritarian element in the other, accuses it of Fascist tendencies; the charge is true on both sides. Each group, like its Weimar counterpart, is contributing to the same result: the atmosphere of chronic crisis, and the kinds of controls, inherent in an advanced mixed economy. The result of this result, as in Germany, is the growth of national bewilderment or despair, and of the governmental apparatus necessary for dictatorship. In America, the idea of public ownership of the means of production is a dead issue. Our intellectual and political leaders are content to retain the forms of private property, with public control over its use and disposal. This means: in regard to economic issues, the country’s leadership is working to achieve not the communist version of dictatorship, but the Nazi version. Throughout its history, in every important cultural and political area, the United States, thanks to its distinctive base, always lagged behind the destructive trends of Germany and of the rest of the modern world. We are catching up now. We are still the freest country on earth. There is no totalitarian (or even openly socialist) party of any size here, no avowed candidate for the office of Führer, no economic or political catastrophe sufficient to make such a party or man possible—so far—and few zealots of collectivism left to urge an ever faster pursuit of national suicide. We are drifting to the future, not moving purposefully. But we are drifting as Germany moved, in the same direction, for the same kind of reason.
”
”
Leonard Peikoff (The Ominous Parallels)
“
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”
”
Subcell
“
The Old Testament is a classic example of the religious recycling which has spawned all the religions. So when you are looking for the original meaning of Genesis and the story of Adam you have to go back to the Sumerian accounts to see how the story has been doctored. Genesis says that ‘God’ (the gods) created the first man, Adam, out of ‘dust from the ground’ and then used a rib of Adam to create Eve, the first woman.
”
”
David Icke (The Biggest Secret: The book that will change the World)
“
We now know that the atoms in our bodies were forged in nuclear reactions in stellar furnaces, spewed into the universe in supernovae explosions, and incorporated into our bodies through the long process of the evolution of life over the last 3.8 billion years on Earth. We recognize that after death, our bodily atoms will be dispersed once again through the universe, recycled to once again become star stuff in a cycle of events that will end only with the death of the universe itself. We are part and parcel of the universe, and at the hour of our death when we return to the universe, the old phrase [...] “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” need only be slightly altered to “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust” to be literally true. Cosmic evolution provides us with a master narrative in which our own birth, life, and death are integral parts of the universe, without recourse to the supernatural.
”
”
Steven J. Dick (Cosmos & Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context)
“
These, too [ideologies], have disappeared. And we survive only by a reflex action of collective credulity, which consists not only in absorbing everything put about under the heading of news or information, but in believing in the principle and transcendence of information. While, at the same time, remaining deeply incredulous and resistant to that kind of knee-jerk consensus. We no more believe in information by divine right than serfs ever believed they were serfs by divine right, but we act as though we do. Behind this façade, a gigantic principle of incredulity is growing up, a principle of secret disaffection and the denial of any social bond.
There is a considerable danger of the inertia threshold being crossed, danger of a potential gravitational collapse by an exceeding of the critical mass, thanks to the absorption by the system of all negative elements: crashes, errors, scandals, conflicts -- everything is absorbed back into it as though by evaporation. All the wastes and disorders are digested and recycled. Maddening metastability which gives rise to a whole range of violent, virulent, destabilizing abreactions, which are the symptom of that collapse.
All our contemporary passions arise from this: objectless, negative passions, all born of indifference, all built (in the absence of a real object) on a virtual other, and thus doomed to crystallize for preference on any old thing at all.
”
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Jean Baudrillard (The Perfect Crime)
“
Joy sat idly by the feet of a giant blond man who had beaten seven others in an ugly bar fight. He’d pushed himself drunkenly out a small bathroom window, landed in the glass-strewn alleyway and collapsed atop a pile of flattened cardboard boxes by a recycling bin. Now that the guy was unconscious, Ink could begin his work. Joy munched on a handful of peanuts and handed him instruments in a steady stream.
“Seven by seven,” Ink said as he traced a small line of erupting black birds. “Reminds me of one of the old marks— the seventh son of a seventh son.” He exchanged the razor for the wand. “Not much call for that anymore.”
“Why not?” Joy asked.
“Birth control,” Ink answered and blew the leaf wand dry.
”
”
Dawn Metcalf (Indelible (The Twixt, #1))
“
The story here is not the old chestnut of living in a connected age where information flows more quickly than ever before. The information is not simply flowing in this system; it’s being recycled and put to new uses, transformed by a diverse network of other species in the ecosystem, each with its own distinct function. You write a tweet about what you had for lunch—the original sin of Twitter banality—and within minutes that information is being harnessed to assist a staggering number of different tasks: neighbors forging new personal connections, foodies seeking a delicious cup of potato and leek soup, restaurant owners getting unvarnished feedback from their patrons, Google organizing all the world’s information, newspapers improving their neighborhood coverage at lower cost, and local businesses seeking the attention of the people in their immediate community.
”
”
Steven Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From)
“
As Mother, the Goddess is the birther, caretaker and sustainer of all that She brings forth. She is the embodiment of maternal concern, protectiveness, nurturance, tenderness and love. She bestows her blessings, pours out Her nourishment, much as we expect Her human counterparts to do. But the Great Mother is not only benevolent and tender. She does not only pour forth the sustenance upon which the world depends. To see Her fully, to image this great a Mother, is also to see Her as depriver and destroyer. She is the gorgon who terrifies and petrifies the, earth who is fertilized by blood, the vulture who feeds on the dead. She gives birth to Her children but She also devours them. She is the Goddess of Life but also the Goddess of Death.
The Great Mother is essentially bi-valent, embodying both a 'good' and a 'terrible' aspect. Even the most benevolent of Her images have a darker, more savage side or a destructive 'sister.' Yet this ambivalence is not a static either/or; it expresses one of the most profound and deeply held beliefs of the Old Religion—that life is essentially a process, 'becoming' instead of 'being,' and that this process follows a cyclical pattern that endlessly repeats itself. Just as autumn and winter inevitably follow summer and then give rise to a new spring, just as decaying fruit produces from its dying the medium that enables the hidden seeds within it to sprout, so it was a 'given' to the ancients that the Mother of All embodied this basic and implacable natural way. So the Goddess created life, sustained it, destroyed it, and took it back into Herself in death, only to recycle what She had killed back into new life once more.
”
”
Kathie Carlson
“
Another issue I often see with Bees (and Crickets for that matter) is the fear of disposing of items incorrectly. Again, this comes from perfectionism. I have had more clients than I can count obsess over the best place to recycle old electronics or torn and soiled used clothing. Everything from empty boxes to fabric scraps can be a huge stumbling block when they focus on the “right” and “perfect” way to dispose of something. Sometimes, the garbage really is the best option. It’s sad and wasteful, but holding onto garbage because you are afraid to put it in a landfill isn’t a long-term option.
”
”
Cassandra Aarssen (The Clutter Connection: How Your Personality Type Determines Why You Organize the Way You Do (Clutterbug))
“
I’ve lived a life beyond any expectation I ever had as a child. But perhaps this is because I never had any expectations. Except to have fun. Fun is awesome, and my biggest motivator. Whenever I have a decision to make, I base my choice on what would yield the most fun. Because he who has the most fun wins. Why should we ever stop having fun? I plan to have fun until it’s no longer possible. Then I’ll surely be ready to move on, recycle this old body back to the Earth. See what’s next. How can it not be great? Perhaps even greater than this life. Until then I plan to have as much fun as humanly possible. See ya on down the trail…
”
”
Scott Stillman (Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness (Nature Book Series))
“
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the training of priests was in disarray, and often they would simply recycle the sermons of the church fathers.158 Further, the increasing centralization of celebrating Christ in the Mass decreased the proclamation of Christ in the sermon. Moreover, the unofficial shift to a semi-Pelagian position shifted the emphasis in preaching from the grace of God in Christ for salvation to the good works that Christians needed to perform. In other words, of the four senses, the moral sense gained the upper hand in preaching.
”
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Sidney Greidanus (Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method)
“
The calcium in your bones came from a star. We are all made from recycle bits and pieces of the universe. This matters because origins matter.
”
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Augusten Burroughs (This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.)
“
Harris suggested we stop referring to each other as my husband/my wife and this felt okay because meanwhile the three of us were making a family coat of arms. This was something we had always wanted to do, but it had never happened, probably because we’d never had a particular relationship credo other than what the state had issued us. Now we drew with black Sharpies on the back of an old David Bowie poster to make something that looked like a sign for queer recycling but represented our commitment to being honest with each other about who we really were, even if we thought the other people wouldn’t like it. There was a big spoon shape for capacious holding. There were three black hearts for the three of us and the letters M and P, which meant we would keep being Sam’s Mama and Papa no matter what; this would never change. Harris was adding what looked like paws to the right and left corners. “What’s that?” He touched his forehead with the side of his hand. Our old salute. Still comrades, in life’s trench together. Sam added a frowny face with an X through it that represented a commitment to more fun times and less boring times; making this coat of arms was their example of a very boring time.
”
”
Miranda July (All Fours)
“
The john—strictly speaking the Waste Management System—looked like it would be less fun. It was the old space shuttle design, a lavatorial veteran of decades of spaceflight. There was a commode with an operating handle and, God help her, a control panel. Liquid waste would be captured and pumped away for recycling. Solid waste wasn’t recycled; a valve would open to the vacuum of space to dry out the feces, and it would then be dumped overboard. When she turned the handle a vent opened and air started sucking its way down into the commode, big vanes turning in a very intimidating way. The toilet could only be used four times an hour, she noted with apprehension. She suspected that in the early days at least they would need more capacity than that.
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Stephen Baxter (Time (Manifold #1))
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That’s creepy,” he says. “That you recycle old movie smiles? I agree.” “That you notice.” He laughs and gets out of the car.
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Annabel Monaghan (Nora Goes Off Script)