During my last few hours of duty proper with YOG yesterday midnight, all systems crashed. I had never been more desperate to get back home, to snuggle up in bed. Temperature was rising, head was pounding.
I think my body was waiting for it, waiting for the excitement and everything to be over, holding out [...]
Posts under ‘Seen/Heard/Read’
A dose of medicine
Putting power to the pedal
I didn’t realise how young these athletes were until I got closer to the action. Mostly in their 16s and 17s, sporting faces of determination and anxiousness as their coaches held last-minute pep talks with them. The Thai cyclist was using a squishy pink-eared bunny hairband to tie her ponytail! They’re really still just kids. [...]
Building trust
The most mistrustful of our kings made himself secure mainly by voluntarily surrendering his life and entrusting his liberty to the hands of his foes, showing complete trust in them so that they might learn trust from him… It is an excellent way to win the heart and mind of another man to go and [...]
On experience (VI)
A man had need have sound ears to hear himself frankly criticised; and as there are few who can endure to hear it without being nettled, those who hazard the undertaking it to us manifest a singular effect of friendship; for ’tis to love sincerely indeed, to venture to wound and offend us, for our [...]
On Virgil
The more our moral thoughts are abundant and solid the more engrossing they are and oppressive… We need our soul to be instructed in the means of sustaining evils and of fighting them off, instructed too in the rules of right-living and right-believing; and we need to awaken her to practise so fine an endeavour. [...]
Elements of circumstance
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As [...]
The butterfly of freedom
From Edward Monkton:
On vanity III: Judging
Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging.
~ Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1587-88)
Riders
The surest thing there is is we are riders,
And though none too successful at it, guiders,
Through everything presented, land and tide
And now the very air, of what we ride.
What is this talked-of mystery of birth
But being mounted bareback on the earth?
We can just see the infant up astride,
His small fist buried in the bushy hide.
There [...]
Simplicity
How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesn’t care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.
~ Emily Dickinson
