[Image: display window of “mini-prints” taken with the Fujifilm Instax camera (originally from the Photojojo store). See note at bottom of post for more.]

From whiskey river:

You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was talking about fast Fourier transforms and she stopped midsentence and said, “Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.”

That’s what I believe. I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it — or my observation of it — is temporary?

(John Green [source])

…and (italicized portion):

In the Storm

Some black ducks were shrugged up on the shore. It was snowing hard, from the east, and the sea was in disorder. Then some sanderlings, five inches long with beaks like wire, flew in, snowflakes on their backs, and settled in a row behind the ducks— whose backs were also covered with snow— so close they were all but touching, they were all but under the roof of the ducks’ tails, so the wind, pretty much, blew over them. They stayed that way, motionless, for maybe an hour, then the sanderlings, each a handful of feathers, shifted, and were blown away

out over the water, which was still raging. But, somehow, they came back and again the ducks, like a feathered hedge, let them stoop there, and live. If someone you didn’t know told you this, as I am telling you this, would you believe it? Belief isn’t always easy. But this much I have learned, if not enough else— to live with my eyes open. I know what everyone wants is a miracle. This wasn’t a miracle. Unless, of course, kindness— as now and again some rare person has suggested— is a miracle. As surely it is.

(Mary Oliver [source])

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