Picture a wave in the ocean.

You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through, and it’s there, and you can see it, you know what it is.

It’s a wave.

And then it crashes on the shore and it’s gone.

But the water is still there.

The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while.

That’s one conception of death for a Buddhist.

The wave returns to the ocean, where it came from, and where it’s supposed to be.

• Chidi, The Good Place 💬

Rain hisses like swinging snakes and gutters gurgle. Orito watches a vein pulsating in Yayoi’s throat. The belly craves food, she thinks, the tongue craves water, the heart craves love, and the mind craves stories. It is stories, she believes, that make life in the House of Sisters tolerable, stories in all their forms: the gifts’ letters, tittle-tattle, recollections, and tall tales like Hatsune’s singing skull. She thinks of myths of gods, of Izanami and Izanagi, of Buddha and Jesus, and perhaps the Goddess of Mount Shiranui, and wonders whether the same principle is not at work. Orito pictures the human mind as a loom that weaves disparate threads of belief, memory, and narrative into an entity whose common name is Self, and which sometimes calls itself Perception.

• from The Ten Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell 📚 💬

All creatures of our God and King Lift up your voice and with us sing, Alleluia! Alleluia! Thou burning sun with golden beam, Thou silver moon with softer gleam! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! O praise Him! Alleluia!

Thou rushing wind that art so strong Ye clouds that sail in Heaven along, O praise Him! Alleluia! Thou rising moon, in praise rejoice, Ye lights of evening, find a voice! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! O praise Him! Alleluia!

Thou flowing water, pure and clear, Make music for thy Lord to hear, O praise Him! Alleluia! Thou fire so masterful and bright, That givest man both warmth and light. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! O praise Him! Alleluia!

Dear mother earth, who day by day Unfoldest blessings on our way, O praise Him! Alleluia! The flowers and fruits that in thee grow, Let them His glory also show. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! O praise Him! Alleluia!

And all ye men of tender heart, Forgiving others, take your part, O sing ye! Alleluia! Ye who long pain and sorrow bear, Praise God and on Him cast your care! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! O praise Him! Alleluia!

And thou most kind and gentle Death, Waiting to hush our latest breath, O praise Him! Alleluia! Thou leadest home the child of God, And Christ our Lord the way hath trod. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! O praise Him! Alleluia!

Let all things their Creator bless, And worship Him in humbleness, O praise Him! Alleluia! Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son, And praise the Spirit, Three in One! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! O praise Him! Alleluia!

• by St. Francis of Assisi 📚 💬

I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon – the unimaginable universe.

I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

• From The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges 📚 💬

“In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

Excerpt From Slowness by Milan Kundera 📚 💬

Once there were brook trout in the streams of the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

excerpt from The Road by Cormac McCarthy 📚 💬

The woman when she saw him put her arms around him and held him. Oh, she said, I am so glad to see you. She would talk to him sometimes about God. He tried to talk to God but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him and he didn’t forget. The woman said that was all right. She said that the breath of God was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all of time.

excerpt from The Road by Cormac McCarthy 📚 💬

Be with those who help your being. Don’t sit with indifferent people, whose breath comes cold out of their mouths. Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.

• Rumi 📚 💬

That there was such a house in the world, lit and open and empty, became a story in those days; there were other stories, people were in motion, stories were all they cared to hear, stories were all they believed in, life had got that hard. The story of the house all lit, the house of four floors, seven chimneys, three hundred and sixty five stairs, fifty-two doors, traveled far; they were all travelers then. It met another story, a story about a world elsewhere, and a family whose names many knew, whose house had been large, and populous with griefs and happinesses that had once seemed endless, but had ended, or had stopped; and to those many who still dreamed of that family as often as their own, the two stories seemed one. The house could be found. In spring the basement lights went out, and one in the music room.

People in motion; stories starting in a dream, and spoken by unwise actors into wanting ears, then ceasing; the story turning back to dream, and then haunting the day, told and retold. People knew there was a house made of time, and many set out to find it.

• from Little, Big by John Crowley 📚 💬

Come from his burial, none knew where but she, Daily Alice came among them like daybreak, her tears like day-odorous dew. They swallowed tears and wonder before her presence, and made to leave; but no one would say later that she hadn’t smiled for them, and made them glad with her blessing, as they parted. They sighed, some yawned, they took hands; they took themselves by twos and threes away to where she sent them, to rocks, fields, streams and woods, to the four corners of the earth, their kingdom new-made.

Then Alice walked alone there, by where the moist ground was marked with the dark circle of their dance, her skirts trailing damp in the sparkling grasses. She thought that if she could she might take away this summer day, this one day, for him; but he wouldn’t have liked her to do that and she could not do it anyway. So instead she would make it, which she could do, this her anniversary day, a day of such perfect brilliance, a morning so new, an afternoon so endless, that the whole world would remember it ever after.

• excerpt from Little, Big by John Crowley 📚 💬

On his wedding day, he and Daily Alice had gone among the guests seated on the grass, and many of them had given gifts, and all of them had said “Thank you.” Thank you: because Smoky was willing, willing to take on this task, to take exception to none of it, to live his life for the convenience of others in whom he had never even quite believed, and spend his substance bringing about the end of a Tale in which he did not figure. And so he had; and he was still willing: but there had never been a reason to thank him. Because whether they knew it or not, he knew that Alice would have stood beside him on that day and wed him whether they had chosen him for her or not, would have defied them to have him. He was sure of it.

• excerpt from Little, Big by John Crowley 📚 💬

The morning was huge, and went on in all directions before her, and blew coldly past her into the house. She stood a long time in the open doorway, thinking: one step. One step, which will seem to be a step away, but which will not be; one step into the rainbow, a step she had long ago taken, and which could not be untaken, every other step was only further. She took one step. Out on the lawn, amid the rags of mist, a little dog ran toward her, leaping and barking excitedly.

– excerpt from Little, Big by John Crowley 📚 💬

There was a time when we did not form all words as now we do, in writing on a page. There was a time when the word “&” was written with several distinct & separate letters. It seems madness now. But there it is, & there is nothing we can do about it. Humanity learnt to ride the rails, & that motion made us what we are, a ferromaritime people. The lines of the rail sea go everywhere but from one place straight to another. It is always switchback, junction, coils, around & over our own train-trails. What word better could there be to symbolize the rail sea that connects & separates all lands, than “&” itself? Where else does the rail sea take us but to this place & that one & that one & that one, & so on? & what better embodies, in the sweep of the pen, the recurved motion of trains, than “&”? An efficient route from where we start to where we end would make the word the tiniest line. But it takes a veering route, up & backwards, overshooting & correcting, back down again south & west, crossing its own earlier path, changing direction, another overlap, to stop, finally, a few hairs’ widths from where we began. & tacks & yaws, switches on its way to where it’s going, as we all must do.

• excerpt from China Mieville’s Railsea 📚 💬

“I dream everyone in the world is asleep, dreaming. I dream frost patterns on a temple bell. I dream bright water dripping from the spear of Izanagi, and the alchemy that transforms these drips into the land we call Japan. I dream the Pleiades, and flying fish, and speckled eggs in nests. I dream of skin flakes in keyboard gullies. I dream cities and the ovaries they issue from. I dream lovers who glimpse each other long before they become lovers, and I dream the songs they fall in love to, and I dream the songwriters who find the songs. I dream a mind in eight parts, and a compass rose. I dream of a girl, drowning, resigned to her fate now that she knows that there is no possibility of being saved by her brother. Her willowy body is passed from current to current, tide to tide, until it has dissolved into pure blue; and I am sorry, but she knows I am sorry, and she wants me to let her go because she does not want me to drown too, which I will, if I spend the rest of my life looking for her. I dream of a stone whale, of barnacles on the whale, watching it all. When my dream falters, all the world questions its own substance, so it is no surprise that I also dream the message bubbling from the stone whale’s blowhole.”This is the National Seismology Bureau, interrupring this program to bring you an emergency news flash … ”

― Number Nine Dream by David Mitchell 📚 💬

“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how it is with us. It’s a shame, Kath, because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever.”

― Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro 📚 💬

“How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.”

From Mikhail Bulgakov. “THE MASTER AND MARGARITA” 📚 💬

Landsman, of course, is sorry, too. He has already apologized to her several times, alone and in the presence of others, orally and in writing, formally in measured phrases and in untrammeled spasms: Sorry I’m sorry I’m so, so sorry. He has apologized for his craziness, his erratic behavior, his glooms and jags, for the years of round-robin exaltation and despair. He has apologized for leaving her, and for begging her to take him back again, and for breaking down the door to their old apartment when she declined to do so. He has abased himself, and rent his garments, and groveled at her shoes. Most of the time Bina has, good and caring woman that she is, offered Landsman the words he wanted to hear. He has prayed to her for rain, and she has sent cool showers. But what he really requires is a flood to wash his wickedness from the face of the earth. That or the blessing of a yid who will never bless anyone again.

• excerpt from Michael Chabon. “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union”. 📚 💬

But this is a new chapter. The city is going back in time, readying itself to start again with its simple piracy in the rich shores near my home. Everything has changed, and I find myself trembling, excited, biding my time, eager to finish this letter.

It does not embarrass me. I am opened up by it.

This is a Possible Letter. Until the last second, when I write your name beside that word “Dear,” all those sheets and months ago, this is a Possible Letter, pregnant with potentiality. I am very powerful right now. I am all ready to mine the possibilities, make one of them fact.

I have not been the best friend to you, and I need you to forgive me that. I think back to my friends in New Crobuzon, and I wonder which of them you are to be.

And if I want this letter to be a remembrance, to be something with which to say goodbye instead of hello again, then you will be Carrianne. You are my dear friend, if that is so, and the fact that I did not know you when I started to write you this letter means nothing. This is a Possible Letter, after all.

Whoever you are, I have not been the best friend to you, and I am sorry.

• excerpt from China Mieville. “The Scar”. 📚 💬

I hope that you were motivated by a desire for knowledge, a yearning to see what can arise from a universe’s exhalation. Because even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable. Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.

Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.

exceprt from Ted Chiang’s Exhalation. 📚 💬

“Where did I come from?” you asked. “Where’s my father?”

“You don’t have one,” I said. “I made you myself.”

“Everyone has a father.”

“Not everyone.”

“Why did you make me?” you said.

“I made you so that I could love you,” I said.

• from “Cloudberry Jam” by Karin Tidbeck (from the short story collection Jagannath) 📚 💬