This Is Water by David Foster Wallace Full Speech

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

.....................

The full text is here: https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

David Foster Wallace Feb. 21, 1962 – Sep. 12, 2008, 10 years after his untimely death.

Paris is always Paris

 

Because you can make a sentimental journey to a place that changed your life 40 years ago in the hope of finding some trace of your younger self, and then discover that this younger you has been living in Paris all these years, just as Paris has been living all these years in you... 

Looking for Jane...

Jane's home at Bath

Bath

Roman Bath

Bath

Bath

Jane Austen 1775-1817

I was born in a tiny island village, where the culture was, wealth is the foundation of a good marriage. I happen to read a lot as a teen, starting one book as I finished the last. In the island's only one room library I read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in Chinese translation, a young woman would reject a wealthy man because she didn't love him, when Elizabeth Bennet said to Darcy, "… I would now thank you. But I cannot — I have never desired your good opinion… " 

I turned down a few proposals later and my mother was not happy!

Looking for William...

William Wordsworth's Dove Cottage

Grasmere, Lake District

Grasmere, Lake District

Grasmere, Lake District

William Wordsworth's resting place

William Wordsworth 1770-1850

In December 1799 William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy were living in Dove Cottage at Grasmere. Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson on October 2, 1802. The Sir William Lowther financial settlement helped to support a growing family and also allowed the Wordsworths to continue their generosity to various friends and men of letters, many of whom came to stay at Dove Cottage, sometimes for months on end. 

Waiting for Godot

April 13, 1906—December 22, 1989

—Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.

—We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?

—We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.

—Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.  —Samuel Beckett

Totem Transport by Arc De Soleil

Sonnet XLII —Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, February 22, 1892 — October 19, 1950

Pablo Picasso 1881-1973

The Imploring 1937

Faun's head 1938

Head 1938

 

Self-portrait 1907

Manolo (Manuel Martinez Hugué), ask Picasso in front of one of his own pictures: "And what would you say if your parents turned up to meet you on the station at Barcelona with faces like that?"

Pablo Ruiz Picasso, October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973