Lovely coastline, lovely ocean, lovely hills and mountains, lovely valleys and rivers, lovely trees and birds. Lovely weather.

A lovely freedom for a lovely people around a lovely Bay transversed by lovely bridges.

As I always like to say I'm connected to the federal system; at least I admit to it and cultivate whatever knowledge is possible from such a beast.

Since I respect my culture and place I respect all others.

I love to see the Earth as it is, in its materiality, juxtoposed to empty flashing space.

We are the bold animals that make things happen.

I have gone at their speed but they are ignorant of the fact that there are speeds and there are speeds. Their speed is precisely the speed at which things are predicted and controlled.

The boldest animal goes at the speed where there is yet no instrumentation to record it.

The true poet knows no fear. The world concocts a lot of the stuff but it is superfluous. "The fear you throw at me has been experienced a thousand times by people better than myself. Isn't that a clue as to your impotence as a fear-monger?"

You would provoke fear only to try and change some policies; I smell the rat and it smells very familiar to me, pass on with your fear and don't disturb me again.

The young are idealistic and full of wonderful plans for the globe. But then there are changes that changes youth itself and it must move along paths not of its choosing and the globe is abandoned for something nearer to the self-interest of the person. This is a sad lesson in life. And yet, something of the youth obtains, something happens. It always does and always will.

The idealisms of youth are a stimulation to all who are no longer young.

Life is not lived globally. It is lived locally, inside one's skin. It was that way eight thousand years ago and it will be that way eight thousand years from now. Best to have a locality that is connected to many, many other localities. Best to have a locality that permits what is under the skin to grow and develop in multivarious ways.

We can have a marvelous time of it yet there is more, always more. And only that which teaches us how to build with value has credibility. Almost everything else to cruddy human nature and what cruddy human nature has erected around itself, usually it's a taste for destruction.

In America the writer listens and synthesizes all the points of view which determine the life and politics of others. He has no interest in supporting any particular point of view. If they exist as ends into themselves then they are simply foolish and throwing away that great American trait of openness and tolerance. The writer has no control over the creation or destruction of various points of view. They are created for some reason, have a life, wither and die; new imperatives come into being and the free people start defining themselves this way, now that way. "Ah, let me see you, let me understand this new point of view, let me see how you enact it in real life." Let all the thousands flourish. One era it is race and gender, in another era it is fundamentalist religion, in another era it is workers or students. Who knows? It feels to me at any rate, that most of these fragments have burnt themselves out so one prudently waits the creation of new ones.

In a free society consciousness plays at the highest level it can; it reaches for levels not attained in static or aristocratic cultures.

At a particular moment in development all is expression. All is consciousness, especially that which doesn't think about it.

The Bridge is as much an expression as a piece of art or novel. Technology is a marvelous expression as long as it's taken apart and taken out of the context you find it. It is one of the privilges of being "artistic." Then "refinement" and "discrimination" takes place because one object or one form of expression speaks to the deeper self or brings us closer to who we are, truly are.

There is no template for it, one either has the experience or not.

2008

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