[danny-swims]

Arabian Peninsula | Birthplace of Civilization

[danny-swims]

I was sitting on the seashore, half listening to a friend arguing violently about something which merely bored me. Unconsciously to myself, I looked at a film of sand I had picked up on my hand, when I suddenly saw the exquisite beauty of every little grain of it; instead of being dull, I saw that each particle was made up on a perfect geometrical pattern, with sharp angles, from each of which a brilliant shaft of light was reflected, while each tiny crystal shone like a rainbow… the rays crossed and recrossed, making exquisite patterns of such beauty they left me breathless… then, suddenly, my consciousness was lighted up from within and I saw in a vivid way how the whole universe was made up of particles of material which, no matter how dull and lifeless they might seem, were nevertheless filled with this intense and vital beauty. For a second or two the whole world appeared as a blaze of glory. When it died down, it left me with something I have never forgotten and which constantly reminds me of the beauty locked up in every minute speck of material around us.

George Russell | AE

[danny-swims]

The Euphrates River. Babylon, Iraq

[danny-swims]

Ninurta attacks Anzu to regain the stolen Tablet of Destinies. From a stone sculpture found in the temple of Ninurta at Nimrud, Iraq. (Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, ii, plate 5)

[danny-swims]

17.07.29

[danny-swims]

[danny-swims]

If we wish to know about a man, we ask ‘what is his story–his real, inmost story?’–for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us–through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives–we are each of us unique.

Oliver Sacks, M.D | Author, Neurologist.

[danny-swims]

“…by it’s very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies- all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.“ -The Doors of Perception, A. Huxley

[danny-swims]

The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819) Oil painting, by the French Romantic painter Théodore Géricault

[danny-swims]

[danny-swims]

“What is the meaning of life? -this question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.“

Julian Jaynes, Psychologist. (via danny-swims)

[thevintagearab-deactivated20180]

Touareg - Tassili n'Ajjer - Algérie / Algeria (1981) الجزائر

[danny-swims]

The Witness of History, The Intellectual Consciousness of Greece "...the Greek subjective conscious mind, quite apart from it’s pseudostructure of soul, has been born out of song and poetry. From here it moves out into its own history, into the narratizing introspections of a Socrates and the spatialized classifications and analyses of an Aristotle, and from there into Hebrew, Alexandrian, and Roman thought. And then into the history of the world which, because of it, will never be the same again.” -The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes

[danny-swims]

رياضة الاشوريين في زمن حضارتهم العظيمة, صيد الاسود!

[danny-swims]

O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient councel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet nothing at all—what is it?

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

[danny-swims]

Spiral Galaxy, NGC 2683

[danny-swims]