I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother’s attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design - but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay ; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another moment’s hesitation.

~Edgar Allan Poe, A Descent into the Maelstrom

• 
  Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems
  Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Categories: Seafaring, Advice, Poetry, Books
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The worst images are of people who are overloaded with information, they don’t know what to do with it, and have no idea of what is important… they become information junkies.

~Neil Postman

• What is the problem that a technology seeks to solve?
• Who’s problem is it?
• What new problems does the technological solution create?

Neil Postman, our future problems…

Categories: Advice, Technology
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Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life. Used purely, it is itself pure, and one need not be ashamed of it; and when you feel too familiar with it, when you fee the growing intimacy with it, then turn towards great and serious subjects, before which it will become small and helpless. Seek for the depth of things: there irony never descends–and when you have thus brought it to the edge of greatness, test at the same time whether this mode of perception springs from a necessity or your being. For under the influence of serious things it will either fall away from you (if it is something non-essential), or else it will (if it belongs to you innately) with gathering strength become a serious tool and be ranked among the means by which you will have to form your art.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

• 
  Letters to a Young Poet
  Author: Franz Xaver Kappus

Categories: Rilke, Irony, Advice, Books
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Dear friend,

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Delivered by a neighborhood friend at just the right time.

Categories: Advice, Poetry, Neighbors
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