Цитатите, които ни създадоха

[Кал]

Аз, Сапожников, двайсет и една годишен, син на Сапожников, ако остана жив, обещавам да не разказвам за войната, да не чета за нея книги, да не гледам филми, да не слушам радиото, да не чета за нея във вестниците, да не я анализирам, да не се опитвам да я разбирам или да обобщавам опита от нея, дотогава, докато не измисля как да я убия. Защото войната, проклета да е, трябва да бъде убита.
И ако, както са ни учили, войната е продължение на политиката, а политиката – продължение на икономиката, то понеже без енергия няма икономика, който държи в ръцете си енергията, той държи властта. И ако енергията бъде разпределена на всички, тя ще се изплъзне от ръцете на шизофрениците.
Затова аз, Сапожников, син на Сапожников, се заклевам да измисля автономен двигател, който ще направи всеки отделен човек независим от шизофрениците, и войната ще умре.

Сякаш слушам гласа на Валашу от цикъла за Еа на Зиндел...

[Кал]

[quote="In "The Golden Helix," Theodore Sturgeon"]He let a vision of April grow and fill the world. (...) He saw April at the spaceport, holding him in the dark shadows of the blockhouse while the sky flamed above them. We’ll go out like that soon, soon, Tod. Squeeze me, squeeze me … Ah, he’d said, who needs a ship?

Another April, part of her in a dim light as she sat writing; her hair, a crescent of light loving her cheek, a band of it on her brow; then she had seen him and turned, rising, smothered his first word with her mouth. Another April wanting to smile, waiting; and April asleep, and once April sobbing because she could not find a special word to tell him what she felt for him …[/quote]

Spoiler

„Обичаш ли ме?“ – пита тя, от другия край на линията, в хотелската си стая в Осло, през три хиляди километра и сълзите в гърлото си.

„Обича те“ – избълбуква част от мене, докато друга се мята в безпомощността си и търси, търси...

[Кал]

Хайде поне да се веселим. Но веселбите стават все по-скучни. (...) И с какво ли може да се обясни това? Дали не е с липсата на перспектива за веселието? Сапожников помни – веселието беше като перце на вятъра, кратък отдих между две атаки, като лястовицата на онази пролет, която трябваше да дойде след битката на Александър Невски, като обещание. А сега се веселят всеки божи ден, нали няма война? И тъй човек се весели, весели, та чак му се доплаче. И току се измъкнат от дупките си някакви пияни тарзани и започнат да викат по кръчмите: „Едно време беше по-хубаво!“ Кога едно време? През войната ли? Когато убиваха живи хора?
Излиза, че никой не е готов за един хубав живот. Защото, както и да дефинираме хубавия живот, той е немислим без това на човек да му е приятно. Да си нахранен, да имаш покрив над главата си, да си облечен – какво друго? Изкуството? Е, разбира се, това е велика работа. Работата е велика, но засега много велики неща в нея не са направени. Как изглежда все пак този хубав живот? Малко физкултура, нали, малко четене на стихове – и толкоз? Как изглежда все пак хубавият живот?
Трябва ти да ми харесваш страшно, а аз – на тебе, и ние двамата – на останалите, а останалите – на нас. Ако ние един друг не се харесваме, как искаме животът да ни харесва?

[Кал]

Защо се пишат книги, стихове, музика, рисуват се картини?
(...)
Защото дълбоко в душата си всеки поет таи надежда да повлияе на света.
Той, естествено, разбира, че никоя книга не е превъзпитала един кучи син. Кучите синове, кой знае защо, не се превъзпитават. Било защото не четат полезните за тях книги, било защото тези книги още повече ги озлобяват. Било пък защото влиянието на книгата е толкова незначително, че угасва веднага след прочитането ѝ. И все пак онези, на които им се иска да променят света, вършат постоянно своята свята работа, защото искат света да стане като майчина длан. Защо е тъй неунищожимо желанието за такава работа?
Освен работата на всички, освен времето, което всичко промива и филтрира, съществува и индивидуалната надежда. Тя е в следното. Никой не може да гарантира, че неговата дума няма да се окаже решаваща, когато дойде нуждата от едно последно докосване, от една последна перушинка върху везните, които ще накарат родът човешки да възкръсне.

[Кал]

She sat back again, a gentle loosening that made her straight spine seem effortless and restful. Again she did nothing. She simply sat across from me and unfurled herself. I felt her life brush up against me and flow around me. It was but the faintest touching, and had I not experienced both the Skill and the Wit, I do not think I would have sensed it. Cautiously, as softly as if I assayed a bridge made of cobweb, I overlay my senses on hers.
She quested. Not as I did, toward a specific beast, or to read what might be close by. I discarded the word I had always given to my sensing. Kettricken did not seek after anything with her Wit. It was as she said, simply a being, but it was being a part of the whole. She composed herself and considered all the ways the great web touched her, and was content. It was a delicate and tenuous thing and I marveled at it. For an instant I, too, relaxed. I breathed out. I opened myself, Wit wide to all. I discarded all caution, all worry that Burrich would sense me. I had never done anything to compare it with before. Kettricken's reaching was as delicate as droplets of dew sliding down a strand of spiderweb. I was like a dammed flood, suddenly released, to rush out to fill old channels to overflowing and to send fingers of water investigating the lowlands.
Let us hunt! The Wolf, joyfully.
In the stables, Burrich straightened from cleaning a hoof, to frown at no one. Sooty stamped in her stall. Molly shrugged away and shook out her hair. Across from me, Kettricken started and looked at me as if I had spoken aloud. A moment more I was held, seized from a thousand sides, stretched and expanded, illuminated pitilessly. I felt it all, not just the human folk with their comings and goings, but every pigeon that fluttered in the eaves, every mouse that crept unnoticed behind the wine kegs, every speck of life, that was not and never had been a speck, but had always been a node on the web of life. Nothing alone, nothing forsaken, nothing without meaning, nothing of no significance, and nothing of importance.

[Кал]

[quote="In "The Graveyard Reader," Theodore Sturgeon"]I found out the differences between “the truth” and “all the truth.” You can know some pretty terrible things about a person, and you can know they’re true. But sometimes it makes a huge difference if you know what else is true too. I read something in a book once about an old lady who was walking along the street minding her own business when a young guy came charging along, knocked her down, rolled her in a mud puddle, slapped her head and smeared handsful of wet mud all over her hair. Now what should you do with a guy like that?
But then if you find out that someone had got careless with a drum of gasoline and it ignited and the old lady was splashed with it, and the guy had presence of mind enough to do what he did as fast as he did, and severely burned his hands in the doing of it, then what should you do with him?
Yet everything reported about him is true. The only difference is the amount of truth you tell.[/quote]

[Кал]

Защо четем?

[quote="In "The Man Who Figured Everything," Theodore Sturgeon and Don Ward"]“I never read a book in my life,” she said again. She looked at the volume where it lay by the boulder, at Scott, at the book again. She seemed to be having a great deal of trouble getting used to the idea of a man reading a book. “What do you read books for?”
Now he laughed, and she flared up at him, “You laughing at me?”
“Lord, no, ma’am. It’s just that nobody ever asked me that before.”
He looked at the still water for a moment, thinking. “Tell you what, suppose you had a friend, he knew a whole lot more than you do. He could tell you things about what people are like all over the world, the way they live, everything. And what folks were like a hundred years ago or even a thousand. He could tell you things that make your hair curl, lose you sleep, or things that make you laugh.” He looked up at her swiftly, and away. “Or cry.”
He kicked a pebble into the water and watched the sunlight break and break, and heal. “More than that. Suppose you had a friend there waiting for you anytime you wanted him, anyplace. He’d give you all he’s got or any part of it, whenever you wanted it. And even more, you could shut him up if you didn’t feel like listening. Or if he said something you like, you could get him to say it over a hundred times, and he’d never mind.”
He pointed at the book. “And all that you can put in your pocket.”[/quote]

Spoiler

Особено ако е е-четец...

[Кал]

He shook his head pityingly. “This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft.”
“Not all men are destined for greatness,” I reminded him.
“Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?”
“This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.”
“No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?”

[Кал]

[quote="In "Need," Theodore Sturgeon"]“You hear a lot of glop,” he said carefully, “about infantile this and adult that, and acting like a grownup. I’ve thought a lot about that. Like how you’ve got to be adult about this or that arrangement with people or the world or your work or something. Like they’d say you never had an adult relationship with the missus. Don’t get mad! I don’t mean—well, hell, how adult is two rabbits? I don’t mean the sex thing.” He opened his hands to look for more words, and folded them again. “Most people got the wrong idea about this ‘adult’ business, this ‘grownup’ thing they talk about but don’t think about. What I’m trying to say, if a thing is alive, it changes all the time. Every single second it changes; it grows or rots or gets bigger or grows hair in its armpits or puts out buds or sheds its skin or something, but when a thing is living, it changes.” He looked at Smith, and Smith nodded. He went on:
“What I think about you, I think somewhere along the line you forgot about that, that you had to go on changing. Like when you’re little, you keep getting bigger all the time, you get promoted in school; you change; good. But then you get out, you find your spot, you got your house, your wife, your kind of work, then there’s nothing around you any more says you have to change. No class to get promoted to. No pants grown too small. You think you can stop now, not change any more.” Noat shook his craggy head. “Nothing alive will stand for that, Smitty.”
“Well, but why did I think she … why did I say that about—some man with her, all that?”
Noat shrugged. “I don’t know all about you,” he said again. “Just sort of guessing, but suppose you’d stopped, you know, living. Something’s going to kick up about that. It don’t have to make a lot of sense; just kick up. Get mad about something. Your wife with some man—now, that’s not nice, that’s not even true, but it’s a living kind of thing, you see what I mean? I mean, things change around the house then—but good; altogether; right now.”
“My God,” Smith breathed.
“ ’Course,” said Noat, “sooner or later you have to get over it, face things as they really are. Or as they really ain’t.” He thought again for a time, then said, “Take a tree, starts from a seed, gets to be a stalk, a sapling, on up till it’s a hundred feet tall and nine feet through the trunk; it’s still growing and changing until one fine day it gets its growth; it’s grown up: it’s—dead. So the whole thing I’m saying is, this adult relationship stuff they talk about, it’s not that at all. It’s growing up that matters, not grownup.… Man can get along alone for quite a long time ‘grownup’—taking care of himself. But if he takes in anyone else, he’s … well, he’s got to have a piece missing that the other person supplies all the time. He’s got to need that, and he’s got to have something that’s missing in the other person that they need. So then the two of them, they’re one thing now … and still it’s got to be like a living thing, it’s got to change and grow and be alive. Nothing alive will stand for being stopped. So … excuse me for butting in, but you thought you could stop it and it blew up on you.”[/quote]

Чак сега си давам сметка колко години нося тоя пасаж, сраснал се с тъканта на моето собствено дърво – без въобще да си давам сметка, че някога съм го прочел някъде извън мен...

Цитатите, които ни създадоха, м?

[Кал]

– Когато на човек му липсва нещо, щастие е за него да го има; но получи ли го, той е вече задоволен и иска друго... Желанията на хората са безброй и никой не може да ги нахрани, нито самите те, нито робите им, и затова щастието минава... Но има едно желание, което не чака храна, а само себе си подхранва. То се среща рядко, защото хората са забравили за него. Но дойде ли, убива алчността и поражда щедростта. (...)
– Кое е това желание, татко?
– Ние го наричаме блаженство. Често го изпитват децата, много от жените и всеки друг, който храни непознат, звяр или птица.

[Кал]

[quote="In "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" Theodore Sturgeon"]“(...) what would be the effects on a culture if each individual had immediate and welcome access to all the others?”
“Sexual access?” Charlie made a laugh, a nervous sort of sound. “Sexual excess, I’d call it.”
“There’s no such thing,” said the big man flatly. “Depending on who you are and what sex, you can do it only until you can’t do it any more, or you can keep on until finally nothing happens. One man might get along beautifully with some mild kind of sexual relief twice a month or less. Another might normally look for it eight, nine times a day.”
“I’d hardly call that normal.”
“I would. Unusual it might be, but it’s one hundred percent normal for the guy who has it, long as it isn’t pathological. By which I mean, capacity is capacity, by the cupful, by the horsepower, by the flight ceiling. Man or machine, you do no harm by operating within the parameters of design. What does do harm—lots of it, and some of the worst kind—is guilt and a sense of sin, where the sin turns out to be some sort of natural appetite. I’ve read case histories of boys who have suicided because of a nocturnal emission, or because they yielded to the temptation to masturbate after five, six weeks of self-denial—a denial, of course, that all by itself makes them preoccupied, absolutely obsessed by something that should have no more importance than clearing the throat. (I wish I could say that this kind of horror story lives only in the ancient scripts, but on many a world right this minute, it still goes on.)
“This guilt and sin thing is easier for some people to understand if you take it outside the area of sex. There are some religious orthodoxies which require a very specific diet, and the absolute exclusion of certain items. Given enough indoctrination for long enough, you can keep a man eating only (we’ll say) ‘flim’ while ‘flam’ is forbidden. He’ll get along on thin moldy flim and live half starved in a whole warehouse full of nice fresh flam. You can make him ill—even kill him, if you have the knack—just by convincing him that the flim he just ate was really flam in disguise. Or you can drive him psychotic by slipping him suggestions until he acquires a real taste for flam and gets a supply and hides it and nibbles at it secretly every time he fights temptation and loses.
“So imagine the power of guilt when it isn’t a flim-and-flam kind of manufactured orthodoxy you’re violating, but a deep pressure down in the cells somewhere. It’s as mad, and as dangerous, as grafting in an ethical-guilt structure which forbids or inhibits yielding to the need for the B-vitamin complex or potassium.”[/quote]

[Кал]

“There’s a theory that certain normal habit patterns should be allowed to run their course. Take the sucking reflex, for example. It has been said that infants who have been weaned too early plague themselves all their lives with oral activity—chewing on straws, smoking intoxicants in pipes, drinking out of bottle by preference, nervously manipulating the lips, and so on. With that as an analogy, you may look again at the restlessness of mankind all through his history. Who but a gaggle of frustrates, never in their lives permitted all the ways of love within the family, could coin such a concept as ‘motherland’ and give their lives to it and for it? There’s a great urge to love Father, and another to topple him. Hasn’t humanity set up its beloved Fathers, its Big Brothers, loved and worshiped and given and died for them, rebelled and killed and replaced them? A lot of them richly deserved it, I concede, but it would have been better to have done it on its own merits and not because they were nudged by a deep-down, absolutely sexual tide of which they could not speak because they had learned that it was unspeakable.”

[Кал]

Щастието постигаш или сам, или ти го подаряват. Но причината за него лежи извън тебе. А блаженството е вътре в тебе. То е празник, който е винаги с теб, но трябва да го откриеш. Тогава ти плаваш като риба, усещаш го целият и нищо не преследваш. И чувстваш трепета на сливането със света и бавното освобождаване на душата ти от затлачването ѝ с онова, което е чуждо на природата ти. Когато си щастлив, някаква верига те свързва с онова, което те е направило щастлив, и страдаш, щом тя се скъса. А блаженството е нещо, което те свързва към света с хиляди нишки, и докато е здрава поне една от тях, ти можеш да изпитваш блаженство. Целият. А не само онази част от теб, която чрез тази нишка те свързва със света. От известните днес механизми то прилича най-вече на холографията, където във всяка точка на картината е изобразена цялата картина.

[Кал]

[quote="In "Brownshoes," Theodore Sturgeon"]“Do you know what kind of a world we live in? We live in a world where, if a man came up with a sure cure for cancer, and if that man were found to be married to his sister, his neighbors would righteously burn down his house and all his notes. If a man built the most beautiful tower in the country, and that man later begins to believe that Satan should be worshipped, they’ll blow up his tower. I know a great and moving book written by a woman who later went quite crazy and wrote crazy books, and nobody will read her great one any more. I can name three kinds of mental therapy that could have changed the face of the earth, and in each case the men who found it went on to insane Institutes and so-called religions and made fools of themselves—dangerous fools at that—and now no one will look at their really great early discoveries. Great politicians have been prevented from being great statesmen because they were divorced. And I wasn’t going to have the Mensch machine stolen or buried or laughed at and forgotten just because I had long hair and played the lute. You know, it’s easy to have long hair and play the lute and be kind to people when everyone else around you is doing it. It’s a much harder thing to be the one who does it first, because then you have to pay a price, you get jeered at and they throw stones and shut you out.”[/quote]

[Кал]

[quote="In "The First Men," Howard Fast"]This experiment may fail, but if it succeeds it can be the most important event of our time--even more important and consequential than this war we have just fought. (...) I had a wife and three children, and they were put to death because a nation of men turned into beasts. I watched that, and I could not have lived through it unless I believed, always, that what can turn into a beast can also turn into a man. We are neither. But if we go to create man, we must be humble. We are the tool, not the craftsman, and if we succeed, we will be less than the result of our work.[/quote]

[Кал]

[quote="In "The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff," Theodore Sturgeon"]“You ever sleep naked?”
She gasped, and, round-eyed, shook her head.
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Why I— I—” She had to answer him; she had to. Fear rose like a thin column of smoke within her, and then a swift glance at his open, friendly face dispelled it completely. It was extraordinary, uncomfortable, exhilarating, disturbing, exciting all at once. He compelled her and comforted her at the same time.
She found her voice and answered him. “I just couldn’t sleep … like that. Suppose there was a fire?”
“Who said that?” he snapped.
“I beg your—”
“Who said ‘suppose there’s a fire?’ Who told you that?”
“Why, I suppose it—yes, it was my mother.”
“Not your idea then. Figured as much. ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Do you believe that?”
“Of course!”
“You do. How old were you when you learned that?”
“I don’t—know. All children—”
“Children seven, eight, nine? All right. How old were you when you were taught not to unpin your diapers? Not to let anyone see you?”
She did not answer but the answer was there.
“Wouldn’t you say you’d learned ‘thou shalt not expose thy body’ earlier, better, more down-deep than ‘thou shalt not kill?”
“I—yes.”
“Do you realize it’s a deeper commandment with you than any of the Ten? And aside from right-’n-wrong, isn’t it deeper than the deepest, strongest one of all—save thyself? Can’t you see yourself dying under a bush rather than walk naked out on the road and flag a car? ‘Suppose there’s a fire?’ Can’t you see yourself burn to death rather’n jump out a window without your bathrobe?”
She didn’t answer except from her round eyes and her whole heart.
“Does that make any sense, to believe a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I—have to think.”[/quote]

[Кал]

– Извинете, като че ли говоря малко безредно. То е, защото се вълнувам. Но и вие сте лекар, ще ме разберете и така. И сега има толкова опити, толкова методи за борба с тия зловещи образу­вания. Не само хирургичните. Да речем, хипертермията – лечение­то с висока температура на тялото. При 40° С за десет дни всички ракови клетки загиват. Описани са случаи за изчезване на тумор след тежки пристъпи на малария. От морските краставици – холотуриите, произвеждаме и ние холотурин, а от морския червей бонелия – бонелин. Други правим от миди, морски таралежи и звезди. Но във всички случаи крайната победа ще се определи от засиления имуни­тет. Злокачествени клетки се образуват и у младите организми, обаче имунната система веднага ги унищожава. Всеки момент в човешкото тяло пъплят десетина милиона мутантни клетки, вероятни бъдещи огнища на рак, ала невидимата стража ги обезврежда. В повечето случаи тя ги потиска и у възрастните хора. При аутопсии на стар­ци, починали от други причини, са откривани загаснали туморни огнища. Наистина днес е малко по-зле. Имунният ни механизъм е отслабнал от „безработицата“ си. Хигиената и всевъзможните лекарства не му позволяват да се развие напълно. При това е и объркан от множеството антигени в замърсената околна среда.

Илчеее! Какво ти разпразвям аз за хигиената, Илче...

[Кал]

– Знаете ли каква е разликата между животните и човека? Единствената. Не разумът, не речта. Само това, че животните не са в състояние да нарушат природното равновесие. Като човека. Като вас и мен. Все за тия неща си мисля напоследък. Не е ли чо­векът за цялостната природа онова, което е ракът за организма?
– Оставете тези проблеми! Говорим за препарата.
– Точно за него! Защото именно той причини цялата катастрофа. Спомняте ли си какво казва Шилер: „Природата е винаги съ­вършена, ако за беда в нея не е стъпил човекът“. А Гьоте въз­кликва: „Природата е винаги права!“. Прави ли сме ние тогава да нарушаваме реда ѝ?
Милионерът опря юмруци в масата.
– Прав съм аз! Не ме интересува нищо извън мен! Светът съществува, докато съществувам аз, субектът, който го възприема. Изчезна ли аз, няма какво да възприемам. Значи и светът е изчезнал...
– Философия на най-елементарния егоизъм! – изпусна се да изрече мислите си Дюрер. Но не спря. Беше започнал. – Философия на канибала: „Какво е добро? Да те изям аз. Какво е зло? Да ме изядеш ти!“.
Маккреди се владееше добре.
– Както изглежда, вие сте алтруист. Както изглежда, за мен, за цялото човечество извлякохте сквалотимузина – не за Силвия, което ще рече, за вас...
– Укорът ви е напълно основателен. И аз го приемам. Но същността не се променя. Алтруизмът не е мое изобретение, нито на религиите, нито на моралистите. Той е изобретение на самата природа, един от лостовете на еволюцията. Само такова животинско стадо оцелява, в което членовете му са годни на саможертва, за да оцелее стадото.
– Кой твърди това?
– Науката.
– Науката чрез устата на своите жреци. А помните ли един куриоз? За Аристотел, който твърдял, че мухата има осем крака? Аристотел, който до немного отдавна е бил неин главен жрец. Чийто авторитет не е оспорван хилядолетия...
Дюрер се изправи.
– Въпреки вашата ирония вие разчитате пак на тая наука, за да живеете.

[Кал]

I remember sitting in a big, padded chair facing a small, bearded, well–dressed man; to my surprise, he was African–American: probably the first well–educated black person I had ever met. His eyes seemed large, intelligent, and kind. He asked me questions:
“What is your favorite sport?”
“Baseball.”
“And which is your favorite team?”
“The San Francisco Giants. Willie Mays is the greatest baseball player who ever lived.”
“Do you want to play baseball when you grow up?”
“No—I want to be a mountaineer and climb Mt. Everest and find the Abominable Snowman, all on the same day. And when one of my friends in our expedition falls and injures his head, I’ll do brain surgery in a tent and save his life.”
“Do you like to help people?”
“Sure.”
“Your mother said you like to help her vacuum the house. And that you like to train your new puppy—what’s its name?”
“Bonnie Belle the Beagle. I can get her to stay and roll over. She’s really smart.”
“Your mother told me that you were pretty smart. But she said that you were having dizzy spells that bother you. Can you describe what they’re like?”
I wish I could say that my doctor had been a Yoda–like wise man who might have helped me make sense of my strange, new experiences. Perhaps he was hip, in the way of the Beat Generation, a cool cat who listened to hot jazz or Miles Davis in the quiet of his home. He must also have been, I’m sure, a well–trained professional. At that time, psychology and psychiatry were locked in the grip of Behaviorism and Sigmund Freud. The Behaviorists denied the importance of human consciousness and did not believe that internal states of mind could be studied in any meaningful way. Freud, of course, took the opposite approach. But even that great thinker, at best, viewed mystical transports as regressions into the oceanic sense of oneness that a child feels inside the womb, and after, in the close infant bond with his mother. At worst, Freud saw anything mystical as a sort of sickness. Mental health theory in the West has historically tended to ignore or pathologize intense religious and spiritual experiences. I believe that Allen Ginsburg must have been aware of this when he wrote his howl of protest at what he perceived as a money–obsessed, nature–ravaging, and soulless civilization.
I remember, too, being ashamed that my first conscious experience of splendor—the most vital thing about my life—was being treated as a disease. I wonder what might have happened if I had been able to tell that psychiatrist exactly how I burned for a connection to the owls and the oak trees in the woods, to the sky and the sun and the glittering stars. Maybe he would have prescribed years of psychoanalysis; maybe he would have put me on the forerunner drugs of Prozac or Ritalin. As it was, though, I don’t think he had any idea what I was really going through. He told my mother that I was a nice, normal, nine–year–old boy.

[Кал]

In my teens, however, I saw only myself—a part of myself—as the enemy. The part of me that wanted to be like a god (or at least like a golden–skinned surfer) hated the ever–hungry, greedy, piggish part. I believed that higher part to be the “real” me. It contained my consciousness, my sense of being, and my will. Shouldn’t I be able to will my lower self to eat only those foods permitted to it, or even not to eat at all? Just who was in charge of me, anyway?
I soon discovered that the piggish part, the animal part, is strong. Deny it food, and it lies in wait, eyeing the refrigerator, the bread drawer, the cookie jar. Make it go hungry for long enough, and it comes to fear that it is starving to death. Then, in those terrible moments when the will crumbles and our higher consciousness collapses into a blind urge to grasp, chew, and eat, it comes snorting and raging out of hiding, and it gorges on whatever delicious foods it can find. It consumes even more than it would have if we had not tried to deny it in the first place. It feels desperate to pack on fat as an insurance against future starvation. And it does so with great efficiency, which is why most diets fail and most dieters eventually gain back all the weight they have lost, and often even more.

[Кал]

We are each of us the result of billions of years of the universe evolving toward its own splendor. And evolution builds: the very mitochondria that power our cells and give us life once existed as separate organisms that first infected our pre–pre–human ancestors and then became one with them. We each contain not only the slime mold and the worm, the fish and amphibian and reptile, but the pig and the ape and the barely human. If we look hard enough, we can discern hundreds of parts: kings and queens, warriors and troubadours, mages, bullies, and saints. And hustlers, adventurers, survivors, rebels, reactionaries, and rogues. And the part of us that wants to be more than human, or rather more fully human. I believe that we need to enlist all these separate selves into a single army of free companions who respect each other and love each other to the death. And who are willing to devote their lives to fight together in order to win a shared splendor.
I will return to this theme of integration again and again, for it is key to everything. All of my characters struggle with themselves, and face as well external obstacles such as exploding stars or dragons or icy wastelands cold enough to freeze the breath. Maram, who writes poems glorifying his second chakra (the body’s sexual center), pants like a dog after every enticing woman he sees. Even as he resists his essential nobility and destiny as a hero, he insists that every man deserves at least one vice. When it is pointed out to him that he also drinks, gambles, gluttonizes, and whores, he declares that he is still trying to decide which vice will be his.

[Кал]

Точно този модел преповтаря и Апостола, комуто принадлежи фразата „Времето е в нас и ние сме във времето“. Тя е цитирана многократно, изписана е върху огромен паметник в сърцето на столицата и на държавата ни, но, подобно на Исусовите притчи, живее в нас повече с поетичността, отколкото с дълбочината си. Левски гледа на човека, на „нас“, като на не-време, като на субстанция, изправена срещу времето, и в същия момент в най-пряко взаимоотношение с него, защото „то нас обръща и ние го обръщаме“. Но какво е не-времето, кой е отричащият корелат на времето? Вечността! Не-времето е Вечност, а Не-вечността — това е времето. Вечността побира, помества в себе си времето, а то пък ѝ дава реален израз. Поне така ги схваща религиозната философска мисъл. В тукашния живот ние пропускаме през себе си времето, чрез нас вечността се превръща във време. В отвъдния — времето се превръща в своето отрицание, във Вечност. Сегашният ни живот, земният, е във времето, в историята, а отвъдният, метаисторическият е във вечността. В такъв смисъл няма да е пресилено да се каже, че в откровението на Апостола е закодирана същата стара национална концепция за човека като обиталище на Временния и на Вечния живот, за човека като поданик на Земното и Небесното царство. Концепция, която иде от Паисий и отпреди него.

[Кал]

[quote="In "Pruzy's Pot," Theodore Sturgeon"]It hit us all of a sudden, one night after one of these mouth-marathons, that anyone who has a complaint ought to have to qualify and be certified first. I mean, here’s somebody who thinks it’s just awful about the dirty water and the foul air. What is he doing about the solid waste he creates in his own house? What kind of poison-factory is he driving, and does he keep it running in such a way as to minimize the junk it puts into the air? Does he support government people he knows are corrupt, or by apathy just let them go on corrupting? The more we heard this kind of crap from these hobby gripers, the more we felt that a man should qualify to complain, just as he has to qualify to drive a bus or cut an appendix or run a ferryboat. Or vote. And if we were going to be honest about it, we had to look at ourselves. Point a finger at anybody and you’ll find you have three fingers pointing at you.[/quote]

[Кал]

(...) Разбра, че преди Атлантида е трябвало да съществува поне още една цивилизация, от която нищо не е останало, защото не са останали оръдия на труда. Защото Атлантида е била създадена от хомо сапиенс, човек разумен, тя е имала дворци, кораби, храмове, крепостни стени, които без оръдия на труда и без технология не може да се построят. Значи, тя е била построена от разумния човек, който днес вече е забравил своя произход и си мисли, че мозъкът на кроманьонеца, хомо сапиенс, е могъл изведнъж да възникне от безмозъчните му прадеди. Значи, разумът, съвременният, ще се е зародил единствено преди Атлантида и ще се е зародил само ако човекът е разполагал с оръдия на труда; но тези оръдия на труда не са запазени. И Сапожников си помисли – а задължително ли е тези оръдия на труда да бъдат изкуствени? Паметта на хората още от историческо време е запазила названието на робите „говорящи оръдия“. Но роби е имало, когато вече е имало богатство. Какви живи оръдия е можело да има преди богатството? Възможният отговор е само един – това ще са били животни, но не пленени, а свободни и опитомени. Това ще са били животни, с които човекът е имал общ „език“, общо средство за комуникация. Та нали и сега кучето и конят, камилата и волът, слонът и ламата са живи оръдия на производството, които не са били изместени нито на времето си от робите, нито днес от машините. Значи, съществувала е, съществувала е онази изчезнала, предтехнологична цивилизация, която не ни е оставила обикновените оръдия на труда, защото те не са ѝ трябвали, защото е съществувал някакъв общ „език“ между някакви животни и хората и между самите хора – единен, общ език. И си спомни в колко митове се говори за герои, които разбирали езика на птиците и животните. И, значи, преди членоразделната реч, която е потрябвала за технологията, защото на животните, доставящи храна за себе си и за хората, технология не е била нужна, защото технологията се състои изцяло от термини – преди това е трябвало да съществува реч нечленоразделна, но разбираема за тези, на които е била нужна. И си спомни езика на свиренето с уста, тоест езика на вече загиналите гуанчи, който се е наричал „силбо гомера“. И до днес се открива език на свиренето в планините на Тибет и Турция. Тогава Сапожников си спомни за делфините, които си разменят звуци, подобни на свиркане, и продължават да се опитват чрез тях да влязат във връзка с човека, и продължават да се проявяват като негови приятели, понякога гонят рибата към мрежите му. И си спомни мита за Посейдон, който се носи по море с колесница, теглена от делфини.
(...)
– Знаеш ли какво си мисля, Сапожников... нещата не са толкова страшни и ние с тебе не сме чак толкова нищожни – каза Аркадий Максимович. – Ако се установи, че човекът трябва да влезе в симбиоза с делфините и с кучетата... всичко останало ще се нареди. Тогава не ни плашат никакви прахосмукачки, дори такива, които ще могат да пишат книги. Горе главата, Сапожников...
Петелът изкукурига. Значи, скоро щеше да се съмне.
– Буди ни той, буди ни хиляди години – каза Сапожников. – А ние все не щем да се събудим. Добре, нека започнем от нещо малко. Да се опитаме да разберем, какво иска да ни каже?
– То е ясно. Ставайте, пънове. Време е да мислите!
– Да опитаме ли?
Те подадоха глави през прозореца и силно изкукуригаха.
Кучетата от целия блок се разлаяха.
Двамата се дръпнаха обратно.
– Срамота... дори кучетата не ни разбраха... Не сме достатъчно просветени, пък и акцента сме загубили – каза Сапожников. – Отвикнали сме за изминалите хиляди години. Съвсем сме оглупели. Нищо, ще трябва да си отспим. Работата няма да стане просто с кондак... Откъде накъде ще ни повярват? Ние през всичкото време за тях сме били убийци. Дето дори хората не са жалили... Пък утре, живот и здраве, ще започнем полека-лека... Със скоростта на трева и с ритъма на сърцето...

[Кал]

When my oldest daughter, Justine, was little older than four, she became very upset at our destruction of nature. (...) As we made our way up the street, I noticed Justine taking great care to avoid stepping on a swarm of ants. She informed me that we should pay more attention to such things. “Because if we kill all the ants,” she said, “there won’t be any more people.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her. “Why won’t there be any more people?”
I thought that perhaps, in one of her books or videos, she had learned a basic ecological principle. But her insight proved more personal—and much simpler.
“Because,” she told me, “people would be so sad, we’d all want to kill ourselves, too.”

[Кал]

I sometimes call the confusion of the two realms the Second Great Philosophical Mistake of humankind. Our needs in either one of these realms cannot be satisfied through a realization of the other. In the finite realm, to be healthy and happy (and even alive), we require an ascending order of things: on the most basic level, we all must have food, drink, shelter, warmth, and sleep—even sex. Then come our needs for safety and belonging to our families, and for love, esteem, and a purpose to our lives. On the highest level, even if we remain unaware of it, we all desire to bring forth our splendor and shine.
Likewise, an experience of the Infinite cannot feed our bodies or fill the human heart with a very tangible and human love. It cannot build us houses or lives well–lived. If we place that burden upon it, as many have in many places, we become tempted to scorn or even deny the created world. “To be in the world but not of it”—I have known people who have tried to follow this injunction. If we do, we can fall into the trap of perceiving the world as merely an illusion or a sort of living hell that we can escape only through God’s grace, or through heaven, or by ending the cycle of incarnations on earth—or even through death. Nietzsche warned us against investing too deeply in “otherworldly hopes,” which can too easily lead us to despise life and blind ourselves to its beauty. It can also make us lazy as we believe that “God will provide.” Or it can convince us that we should spend most of our time sitting cross–legged in meditation on a buckwheat–filled zafu, gazing at our navels as our lives fall apart around us.
More commonly, I think, we seek the Infinite through finite things. We try to make as much money as we can in order to buy as many fine things as we can, and each time we do, we experience a little thrill and feel that we are meeting a very deep need—until the thrill soon wears off and we find ourselves again hungry for more. We pursue power and fame, which act like drugs upon us, swelling our sense of our smaller selves—not, however, into the majesty of our true and deep Self, but more like a drunkard’s gut overfilling as he guzzles down cheap wine. We become gambling addicts, or sex addicts, or even Internet addicts; too often, we hook ourselves on alcohol, heroin, speed, and other very real drugs. We give ourselves over to seeking our soul mates and falling in love. In the very real transcendence of this exalted state, we look for an ecstatic experience that will delight us forever and change our lives. But that thrill, too, never lasts. At best it blossoms into a deeper love. At worst, it causes us to demand of our beloved that she or he should be as God to us so that we can live together inside a private little heaven. As none of us can provide this divine function for another, our inevitable disappointment can dash dreams into pieces, turn love into hate, and even destroy our lives.
(...)
In “Auguries of Innocence,” William Blake wrote these lines:
 

To see a world in a grain of sand
And Heaven in a wildflower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

 
He also wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”
If we do insist upon using the finite as a doorway to the Infinite, then no part of creation can be privileged or special. If we could walk at will between the two realms, we could open this door anywhere: at work in a sterile cubicle illuminated by artificial light no less than at a beautiful yoga retreat high in the Himalayas. If we went shopping, it wouldn’t matter if we bought a new house or a shiny new Lexus or a Bic pen—or nothing at all. For Paradise, as the wise have said, is but the world rightly perceived.

[Кал]

[quote="In "The Country of Afterward," Theodore Sturgeon"]“She read an article in an old magazine one day. It was a very funny bit, written during one of America’s so-called ‘police actions’ against Communists. This writer had gotten hold of a newspaper story about how much money it cost to kill one of the enemy. He multiplied this by the total body count to date, and came out with a huge figure, which he said would be enough to buy a villa on the Riviera for every family of five in the entire enemy country. He said this would do two things: it would stop the killing, and would knock the hell out of communism.”
They laughed together. Aurora said, “That’s funny, and it’s sharp, but it set Apricot to thinking: Here was an alternative to war, ridiculous as it was. She’d never wondered before if there could be alternatives—who does?
“And that led her to wonder how it was, if there were alternatives, the final choice always seemed to be mass killing. What bothered her most was that in a war a country always screens out the strongest, the quickest, the smartest young men that can be found and sends them out to get their heads blown off.
“And she thought, who makes these decisions? Almost always, old men. ‘Old’ didn’t have to mean years; ‘old’ means with all the juices dried up. ‘Old’ means (whether or not they know themselves) that they hate the young just for being young; they are jealous, envious and angry. It’s nothing new, you know. The old bulls are always afraid of the young ones coming up. This kind of thing was around before humanity was out of the trees.
“Now here is crazy Apricot deciding to do something about it. If the old ones are sitting safe in front of their acres of polished mahogany, sending the young ones to die with a stroke of their ballpoint pen, then, says Apricot, let’s find a way to put the juice back into them. Because she believes that a good little man is as good as a good big man, and a good old man is as good as a good young one. (...)”[/quote]

[Кал]

[quote="In "Why Dolphins Don't Bite," Theodore Sturgeon"]And he began to distribute his sign.
Interest in it developed slowly. He did not force it or sell it or seem to attach much significance to it. He simply did it. Regarded at first as a mere quirk, it began to attract attention and then curiosity; when in a conversation would he make this sign, and did these occasions have anything in common? What was its purpose, and what did it mean? Speaking with someone, he would put out his hands, palms down, the left resting on the right, and raise them together almost to the level of his face, while slightly inclining his head. Then the hands would fall away and the talk would continue. Thought at first to be a gesture of greeting or of farewell—a kind of sayonara—it was gradually noticed to occur at neither of these events.
It was, in its quiet way, extraordinarily potent. The hands placed together and raised appeared to be defensive, to say “Stop!” But the inclined head turned it into a tribute, a concession: “You have a point there.” One thing was certain. Whatever provoked the gesture—intensity, passion, rudeness, that kind of positiveness once described as “being wrong at the top of your voice,” or even simple inaccuracy—once the gesture was made, it ended with Dom Felix having the floor. It was one of the most ingenious stoppers ever devised, and the more its meaning was understood, the more potent it became.
The day Acceptance entered Medea was the day someone was moved to ask of the sign, “What does it mean when you do that?”
Dom Felix smiled and answered. “It’s a way of becoming.” No more would he say about it for a long time.
The day Acceptance began to ferment in the enclave was the day someone thought to ask, “A way of becoming what?”
And Dom Felix smiled and answered, “It’s a way of becoming you.”
He would discuss this, when asked, though he never forced it. He explained that when he used the sign, he suspended his own thought and even his own identity and made a profound effort to become the other person, to see with his eyes, feel with his fingertips, think with all his method and mode, background and learning. So the gesture did indeed cry, “Stop!”—not to the observer, conversant, opponent, but to Dom Felix himself. And the quality of obeisance was real, because for that moment the other was dominant. And the air of concession was real, for during that moment the other was as right, as authoritarian, as commanding, as he felt himself to be.[/quote]

[Кал]

[quote="In "Seasoning," Theodore Sturgeon"]“You said to imagine a great big sphere, and inside is all of time and space. All of it. And outside are these intelligent entities, and all they are is curious; all they want to do is experience.”
“Go on,” Alice said. Her eyes are so bright.…
“One might say: ‘I want the experience of being a seventeen-year-old girl in the fourteenth century who was burned at the stake.’ Or ‘I’d like the experience of being a four-month aborted fetus in 1994.’ And they just dive in and do it.” I looked at Alice. She was waiting for something. I thought about what I just said, and then I remembered: “They have to create what happens. Write a script.” She still waited, so I said, “Not only the experience itself; the house, the city, the country, the whole world where it happens. All of it.”
“Which makes that entity responsible for all of it,” she reminded me.
“So that’s who the ‘little man watching’ really is—that, that thing—”
“Not a thing,” she said, interrupting for the very first time. “It’s you. You’re living a script that you wrote. Which is why free will and predestination are the same thing.”[/quote]

[Кал]

“But why write such rotten scripts? If what you say is so, everybody’s where they want to be, even beggars with sores on their shins and starving children and guys being tortured in jails?” She nodded, watching me. I said, “I can’t accept that.”
She waited a bit and then almost smiled. “Unacceptable?” She asked softly.
And that rang a bell. “Unacceptable … ‘to accept the unacceptable.’ You said that, in the seminar. But I can’t remember why you said it.”
“Yes you can,” she said, and waited. I drew a total blank this time, and I guess she knew it, because she gave me a nudge: “You say you don’t belong here. Is ‘here’—unacceptable?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Then,” she asked, “why did you write this script?” “You mean—the me out there?” She nodded. I thought about that, and then mumbled, “I put it down to—curiosity? That’s all. I mean, throwing yourself into imperfect places, into pain and disappointment and well, the unacceptable—it just doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It sure doesn’t … unless …” I felt my eyes get big. “Unless those, uh, entities want to do what you said—to learn to accept the unacceptable. Even if they have to create it. That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t? Suppose they can’t go on unless they learn that.”
“Go on? Go on where?” She shrugs. “Everything living has to go on. Seed to shrub, shrub to tree, egg to bird.”
“You mean—evolve. They have to learn to accept the unacceptable in order to evolve into—whatever’s next for them.” Surprisingly, she laughed. She said, “You keep on saying ‘they.’ ”