Intellectuals, lovers of life.

"living on the senses requires easily triggered sense of marvel, a little extra energy, and most people are lazy about life. Life is something that happens to them while they wait for death [...]

"when you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesnt matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. it probably doesnt matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life's many spectacles we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the child we all are."

"most of all, the twentieth century will be remembered as the time when we first began to understand what our address was. the big, beautiful, blue, wet ball of recent years is one way to say it. but a more profound way will speak of the orders of magnitude of that bigness, the shades of the blueness, the arbitrary delicacy of beauty itself, the ways in which water has made life possible, and the fragile euphoria of the complex ecosystem that is earth, and earth on which, from space, there are no visible fences, or military zones, or national borders.

we need to send into space a flurry of artists and naturalists, photographers and painters, who will turn the mirror upon ourselves and show us earth as a single planet, a single organism thats buoyant, fragile, blooming, buzzing, full of spectacles, full of fascinating human beings, something to cherish. learning our full address may not end all wars, but it will enrich out sense of wonder and pride. it will remind us that the human context is not tight as a noose, but large as the universe we have the privilege to inhabit.

it will change out sense of what a neighborhood is. it will persuade us that we are citizens of something larger and more profound than mere countries, that we are citizens of earth, her joyriders and caretakers, who would to well to work on her problems together. the view from space is offering us the first chance we evolutionary toddlers have had to cross the cosmic street and stand facing our home, amazed to see it clearly for the first time.

picture this: everyone youve ever known, every one youve ever loved, youre whole experience of life floating in one place, on a single planet underneath you."

(from A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman)

♥ tookie...