once upon a time...

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http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_priz...ecture_en.html

"Writing is a strange and solitary activity. There are dispiriting times when you start working on the first few pages of a novel. Every day, you have the feeling you are on the wrong track. This creates a strong urge to go back and follow a different path. It is important not to give in to this urge, but to keep going. It is a little like driving a car at night, in winter, on ice, with zero visibility. You have no choice, you cannot go into reverse, you must keep going forward while telling yourself that all will be well when the road becomes more stable and the fog lifts.

When you are about to finish a book, you feel as if it is starting to break away and is already breathing the air of freedom, like schoolchildren in class the day before the summer break. They are distracted and boisterous and no longer pay attention to their teacher. I would go so far as to say that as you write the last paragraphs, the book displays a certain hostility in its haste to free itself from you. And it leaves you, barely giving you time to write out the last word. It is over – the book no longer needs you and has already forgotten you. From now on, it will discover itself through the readers. When this happens you have a feeling of great emptiness and a sense of having been abandoned. There is a kind of disappointment, too, because of this bond between you and the book which was severed too quickly. The dissatisfaction and the feeling of something unfinished drives you to write the next book in order to restore balance, something which never happens. As the years pass, the books follow one after the other and readers talk about a 'body of work'. But for you, there is a feeling that it was all just a headlong rush forward."

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Wisdom told me: I am nothing.
Love said to me, I'm all.
Between the two my life flows.


Nisargadatta Maharaj.

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"These days, those phones in our pockets are changing our minds and hearts because they offer us three gratifying fantasies. One, that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; two, that we will always be heard; and three, that we will never have to be alone. And that third idea, that we will never have to be alone, is central to changing our psyches. Because the moment that people are alone, even for a few seconds, they become anxious, they panic, they fidget, they reach for a device. Just think of people at a checkout line or at a red light. Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved. And so people try to solve it by connecting. But here, connection is more like a symptom than a cure. It expresses, but it doesn't solve, an underlying problem. But more than a symptom, constant connection is changing the way people think of themselves. It's shaping a new way of being."

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When you asked me if I'd like to dance,
I could barely stand,
but I found no walls that I could lean against,
so I took your hand
I didn't know where you would dance me to
I only knew I didn't care
I was so happy just to be with you;
it didn't matter where
You danced me to an endless ocean view
from a high mountain plain
Then you danced me through a dark abyss
over cliffs and into flame
And for awhile you seemed to disappear
My head could find no place to rest
But when the ashes and the smoke had cleared,
you were beating in my chest
What a song, what a song,
what a secret, open song we are dancing to
In the cave of the heart it's been playing all along
but until you came, I never knew
Some people ask me what it is I've gained
and if there's a teaching to impart,
but I have no answers and no state to claim,
just an arrow through my heart
And some songs that try to name this luck,
but it's my destiny to fail,
for all expressions and experience
next to this love, pale
I still don't know where we are dancing to,
but I would be a fool to care
I am so happy just to be with you;
it doesn't matter where
What a song, what a song,
what a secret, open song we are dancing to
In the cave of the heart it's been playing all along,
but until you came, I never knew

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