'It's rather disturbing because when you're young you think so much is important including oneself. As you get older I think you find less and less is important apart from one of them, being a love of one's fellow man and a care for their survival. A care for one's immediate family then friends then wider like ripples in water.'
David Bowie
'Check ignition and may God's love be with you'
'I think my spaceship knows which way to go.'
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| European Southern Observatory, Flickr creative commons |
'Coming back into self after a crisis is as slow as mending bone. Psychiatric illness affects the deep centres of the brain that govern perception, emotion, behaviour and personality. These areas - the prefrontal cortex, the thalamus and limbic system manifest the hidden experience of the mind as opposed to the core motor and sensory function of the brain.
In the night I slip past the night staff and go out into the courtyard, lie down on a bench and look up at the sky. The night air ripples. According to Scottish mathematician J. S. Haldane, "the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." This gives me comfort. The stars are out - gleaming cantos of space. In the wide, wide night, there is only the essential smallness of self and the tiny equilibrium of earth and air on which we exist.'
Kate Richards, 2013, Madness: A Memoir, Penguin.
https://katerichardsaustralia.wordpress.com/
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| photo by Ron Knight, Flickr creative commons |
'Wingspans of these birds can approach twelve feet, a reach so wide they cannot flap to take off. Instead they nest on the highest, most exposed ridges so that it is enough to merely stretch their wings into the wind and be vaulted skywards. After take-off they can watch the ocean heave beneath them for two years straight without touching earth or rock. Human beings seem so marginal to their lives that I had the sense that they could barely see me, as if their gaze passed right through me. I sat within inches of one nest, and though the bird sat stiffly, and was clearly uncomfortable on land it breathed an air of impassive serenity. Its feathers trembled like dusted snow, a dazzling, laundered whiteness.'
'They mate for life, and with increasing numbers lost to long-line fishing hooks more of them are standing lonely vigils on the ridges of Bird Island, waiting for mates that never return. Populations are falling as a result. Ornithologists tell us that albatrosses are not clever birds. Developmentally they are quite primitive, and the stereotyped patterns of their behaviour are sluggish and slow to adapt. But as I sat and watched them I thought not of illegal fishing or their reported simplicity but of Herman Melville's awe on an encounter with them: "At intervals it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it ... Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself."
Gavin Francis, 2012, Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins