[Video: Another Cloud Reel, by Vimeo user “Delrious” (whose real name, I think, is Ben Wiggins; you can see some more examples of his handiwork, available for licensing, at Pond5). This genre of video must have a real name — they’re not that uncommon, and something like “time-lapse of the world over an electronic soundtrack” doesn’t exactly trip lightly off the tongue — but I don’t know what it is. Rather Koyaanisqatsi-esque, no? (Not that that exactly rolls off the tongue either!)]

From whiskey river:

It’s a good practice in a way, to be, as they say, in the world, but not of the world. You can go to the Himalayas and miss it completely. Yet you can be stuck in the middle of New York and be very spiritual. I mean, I noticed some places like New York bring out a certain thing in myself while I found in some place like Switzerland, there were a lot of uptight people because they’re living in so much beauty there’s no urgency in trying to find the beauty in themselves. If you’re stuck in somewhere like New York you have to somehow look within yourself; otherwise you go crackers. So, in a way, it’s good to be able to go in and out of both situations. Most people think when the world gets itself together we’ll all be okay. I don’t see that situation arriving. I think one by one, we all free ourselves from the chains we have chained ourselves to. But I don’t think that suddenly some magic happens and the whole lot of us will all be liberated in one throw.

(George Harrison [source: first few sentences here; remainder generally included, with other slight rewording, as here; otherwise, uncertain])

…and (in slightly different words):

But all of us are struggling to be here. One of the great theological questions is around incarnation, which simply means being here in your body — not anywhere else, just here with life’s fierce need to change you — the fact that the more you’re here and the more you’re alive, the more you realize you’re a mortal human being and that you’ll pass from this place. And will you actually turn up? Will you actually have the conversation? Will you become a full citizen of vulnerability, loss, and disappearance, which you have no choice about?

(David Whyte [source])

…and:

The Ninth Elegy
(excerpt)

But because being here means so much, and because all that’s here, vanishing so quickly, seems to need us
and strangely concerns us. Us, the first to vanish.
Once each, only once. Once and no more. And us too,
once. Never again. But to have been
once, even if only once,
to have been on earth just once — that’s irrevocable.

And so we keep on going and try to realize it,
try to hold it in our simple hands, in
our overcrowded eyes, and in our speechless heart.

(Rainer Maria Rilke [source])

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