The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror.
It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing.
It receives but does not keep.
Chuang Tzu

Villa Riviera, Long Beach, California

What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story,
And the greatest good is little enough:
for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.
Pedro Calderon de la Barca

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery. Mary B. Yates

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired. Jules Renard

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men. Roald Dahl

In todays news: Julia Childs has died. What a great pioneer of culinary art she was. Asked by an interviewer what food she didn’t like to eat, Child snapped back, “Food that is badly cooked.” She will be missed

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: ‘Only stand out of my light.’ Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light. John W. Gardner

(from the archives) snorkeling on the Belize coral reef circa 2000

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
Virginia Woolf

*to answer a question asked quite often, YES, i take all the photos you see posted here and this photo was taken with a disposable underwater camera, no fancy rig at all. i think i lucked out.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one;
the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature
instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not
devote itself to making you happy. George Bernard Shaw

Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that’s been our unifying cry, “More light.” Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier’s field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we’re supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light. Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Northern Lights, 1993

* sidenote: this photo was originally taken at night with only the streetlight to illuminate