Life you can evade. 

Death you cannot.

 

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

 

Your children are not your children. 

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself...

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

 for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, 

not even in your dreams.

 

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans; 

in one aspect of You are found all the aspects of existence

 

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

 

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. 

Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley 

than to those who inhabit the mountain?

 

the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow

Hamlet

 

It's always seemed a little preposterous that Hamlet, for all his paralyzing doubt about everything, never once doubts the reality of the ghost. 

Never questions that his own madness might not in fact be unfeigned

There are so many kinds of time

 

. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. 

Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars.

Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. 

Its hard to live in all those kinds of times.

 Easy to forget that you live in all of them.

 

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. 

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

 

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

 Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. 

Sometimes we find others in that darkness, 

and sometimes we lose them there again.

 

When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying,

 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' 

Epictetus replied, 

'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!’

The Book Of Eli takes place in The Matrix

 

So what happens when a war ends, Zion is destroyed, The One takes his 27 humans to build a new Zion and the Matrix has to be rebuilt?

Did The Architect build The Matrix in 7 days?

Building a new Matrix takes time so what happens to all the humans inside, where do they all go and how do they live?

You know when you have an “apocalypse” story, a nuclear war, plague, or whatever, and the cities are destroyed, and man goes back to a more primitive time? That’s a Matrix reboot.

So we have Eli, who is The One, spending 30 years walking through the desert, carrying his book. What he is doing is taking the code back to The Source so the Matrix can reboot, just as Neo did at the end of Revolutions. Eli is blind and sees with “the Force”, just as Neo did.

There are towns cropping up, small communities where surviving humans gather and new ones are born (assigned by the machines when the crops are transferred to the pods and plugged in) as the Matrix codes build new communities that will eventually become huge cities (or one huge city) again.

When the bad guy gets the book, which is useless to him, Eli carries on and ends up reading the book contents out to the man he meets at the other end. It is The One that carries the code in him, not on him, the book itself is meaningless.

The One carries the code back to The Source, where his path ends, and dies. “It is done”.

Solara is Trinity.

 

 

 

 

 

Fight Club takes place in The Matrix

 

This is an earlier version of The Matrix, not the first, maybe the 2^nd or 3^rd. The free humans of Zion have their ships and can hack the Matrix but they cannot enter it the way Morpheus and his crew can.

Tyler is The One in this version of The Matrix and he manifests through an existing nameless person. The Narrator is commonly referred to as Jack, the Edward Norton character. His name is, of course, Thomas Anderson.

Jack carries The One, who manifests as Tyler. Just as Neo, he works in a corporate building in a city and live alone in an apartment.

The purpose of Fight Club, the Project Mayhem, is to recruit humans who want to wake up and build and army. At this time they cannot get humans out anymore than they go in so they create the house on Paper Street, which is quite possibly a Construct, or tied to one, an interface with the ship, or even the Zion mainframe.

The buildings that Tyler wants to destroy are the ones that power the machine army. Destroy the buildings and all power is cut to the army and Zion is saved.

Just as Neo saves the most recent Zion by fighting the Smith army inside the Matrix, Tyler  saves his version of Zion by destroying the 10 buildings inside his Matrix.

The Fight Club itself is part of the Construct that allows humans to fight and train and sustain ongoing intense injury without really being hurt more than superficially or disabled in any way.

It is implied that Tyler is a Morpheus style ship leader who comes in and out of the Matrix as a ghost who interacts with Jack. Jack is therefore The One, and becomes so at the end, and will be the leader inside the Matrix after the machine army is dead.

It is possible that Tyler is The One and manifests through Jack, the way The One is the recent Matrix lived as Thomas Anderson until he “started to believe”.

There are no Agents in the Fight Club Matrix. It is likely that this is the first time the machines realise the humans in The Matrix, led by The One, and with outside help from ships, pose a credible threat. So the  machines now create  the Agent programs and put them inside the Matrix to deal with both human insurgents and rogue exile programs so this won’t happen again.

In the original script for Matrix 2, before the Reloaded script was created, Neo and co do have to go and destroy buildings to stop the machine army. The building Neo works in as Thomas Anderson is actually the hub of the buildings that controls the machine army. This element does not appear in Reloaded, though the concept of cutting the power to 27 buildings as part of the mission remains.

So in earlier versions of The Matrix, the human army and The One would indeed destroy buildings to take down the army threatening Zion.

In the Matrix 2 script this takes a darker turn as the buildings are destroyed in the day while fully populated. The premise is that each human mind working in there represents a body in a pod and that body provides he power for a sentinel. Destroy the building, all the minds die, so the bodies in the pods die, so the Sentinels die. But you sacrifice all those human lives to achieve this. So in the Matrix storylines this element was never pursued.

Similarly is the “burly brawl” where Neo fights the many Smiths, in the original script, each time Neo kills a Smith we see it revert back to the human form it was before it was taken over. We know this happens as in the Matrix film we see Trinity shoot an agent (“dodge this”) who then reverts back to human form. So as Neo is fighting the Smiths he ends up amongst a pile of human corpses he is creating. This element was also removed from the script.

So at the end of Fight Club we see Jack/Tyler/The One destroy all the buildings, now empty, and stop the sentinel army at the gates of Zion.

Marla is, of course, Trinity.

Batman - Iron Man

Why didn't Bruce Wayne do what Tony Stark did and develop himself a suit of armour?

Then Batman would be super strong, invulnerable, have real weaponry and, most important of all, be able to fly for real, something he always envied in Superman.

Wayne Enterprises technology has to be on a par with Stark so it's feasibly possible.

Something to explore in a future Universe.

 

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; 

political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. 

The businessman's tool is values;

 the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

Scepticism

 

Scepticism is a resting-place for human reason,

 where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, 

so that for the future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. 

But it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. 

Such can be obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge,

alike of the objects themselves 

and of the limits within which all our knowledge of objects is enclosed

 

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. 

If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. 

Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them.

 Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. 

In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. 

Is that so hard?

 

Adrenaline is the body's response to stressful situations. 

It's one of many vital chemical compounds our bodies produce that alter our state of consciousness. 

Oxytocin makes us feel bonded with others. 

Dopamine makes us more alert and motivates us to seek reward.

 A lack of serotonin has been linked to depression. 

GABA, an amino acid neurotransmitter, helps reduce anxiety. 

And endorphins create a heightened state of happiness. Like the kind we feel when we win.

The lows drive us to do better. The highs  are the rewards of a job well done.

 And then there are times when our state of mind is altered and it has nothing to do with brain chemistry. 

New opportunities open us up to greater possibilities. 

New information and a new perspective can permanently shift our consciousness and the way we see the world will never be the same.

 

We don’t even ask for happiness, 

just a little less pain

 

 

Our bodies play host to trillions of bacteria and other microbes. 

They live on our skin, in our guts, up our noses. Microbes are found in almost every part of the body. Microbes help us produce vitamins and stimulate our immune system. They break down food and perform many other functions that we need to survive. 

Microbes may sound like uninvited guests, but most live harmoniously in and on our bodies. We need a diverse set of microbes working together to stay healthy. They're an essential part of our systems. 

It turns out they're right where they belong.

 

We ignore things. 

We stay under the covers. We don't pick up the phone. We don't face the music and all that crap. 

But the longer we hide, the worse it can be.

 So open the test results. Have the hard conversation. Say what you mean. Good or bad. You may be surprised at what you find. 

And at the very least, you'll know what you're dealing with.

 

In the late 16th century, a father-son team made a groundbreaking discovery. 

They found that when they put lenses at the opposite ends of a tube, it enlarged objects. 

Their invention was the first compound microscope. 

And as basic as it was, their invention was a gamechanger for science and medicine. The simple use of curved glass to bend and refract light revolutionized how we see the world.

 In many ways, it's not all that different from everyday life. 

Sometimes seeing life through a different lens opens a new world of possibilities.

 

Researchers studied why some people perform better on tests. 

They found that it's not necessarily related to intelligence. 

Some people become anxious during exams and divert mental energy toward anxiety instead of expending it on finding the right answers. 

Others have a better grasp of how tests work. They use process of elimination and other techniques to help them make better choices. 

Some people study harder. They start early, make flashcards, rely on repetition to retrieve answers when they need them. 

Tests don't always measure how much you know. They measure how well you take tests. 

And tests certainly don't measure your worth. 

But knowing that doesn't make it hurt less when you don't succeed.

 

When the body's exposed to rising temperatures, it has the ability to cool itself down. 

We sweat, our blood vessels dilate, and our heart rate increases. Our body releases as much excess heat as it can. 

But when the temperature starts to inch above 100 degrees, our bodies have to work overtime, leading to heat exhaustion. We become nauseated, dizzy, and confused. And we fight like hell to cool down before it's too late. 

For some, the boiling point is more about stuff bubbling up from the bottom. It's about stuff you haven't thought about in a while. It's about stuff that's been heating up while you weren't even paying attention. 

The question is, how well can you contain things before they boil over?

The thing is, even if things don't boil over completely, they can still simmer. 

And as long as you're careful how you handle yourself, you won't get burned.

 

Everyone knows that frozen peas are as fresh as the moment the pod went pop. But what about frozen meat... is that as fresh as the moment the cow went nnyeh nnyeh aaahh ayayayay-uhh?

 

Dying people lie too. 

Wish they'd worked less, been nicer, opened orphanages for kittens. 

If you really want to do something, you do it. 

You don't save it for a sound bite.

 

You want to make things right? 

Too bad. 

Nothing's ever right 

 

People like talking about people. 

Makes us feel superior. 

Makes us feel in control. 

And sometimes, for some people, knowing some things makes them care

 

• • • Without just one nest
    • A bird can call the world home
    • Life is your career
  • • 
      

 

when tidal waves hit, there are often people watching on shore. They see the disaster coming, see the horizon disappearing. They don't really see until it's too late.  while it's good to plan for the worst, you can't really know how you'll handle it until you're smack dab in the middle of it, under the wave, trying not to drown. Disaster has a tendency to melt away everything else in life.  So if you want to know who you'll be in a disaster, ask yourself, "Who am I now?"

 

"Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should." 

 That's how records are broken, how moons are stepped on, diseases are cured, by people who are willing to try. 

We call these people innovators. Fearless. Genius. We call them reckless. Thoughtless. Dangerous.

 It's hard to know which one we are. 

It's hard to know if what we're doing is just crazy or if it's going to change everything.

 

In the early days of medicine, surgical students would perfect their sewing techniques on tree branches. 

Because when looking at an exposed bone in an amputation, human instinct is to recoil, not cut.

 get out of the habit of listening to instinct.

 

 So what about those times when there is no road map? Should we go with our gut then? If instinct is all we have, it's not always a bad thing. It can bring us wonderful places, joyful places.

 And it can also serve an important service, 'cause our gut is usually what warns us when trouble lies ahead.

 

Unlike the laws of science, the rules of life aren't always clear. 

Some rules are unwritten. Some rules are open to interpretation. 

And just when we think we have a handle on the rules, something comes along that totally changes the game.

Job

 

In the course of one day, Job received four messages, each with separate news that his livestock, servants, and ten children had all died. 

He continued to be a faithful servant. He still prays to God. He persevered. 

Job's faith was tested and he passed the test. And for his faith, God rewarded Job with twice what he had before. 

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” That's what Jesus said on the cross before he died.

 "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 

Job asked the question, too. But he kept the faith. And what did he get for it? Replacement children. PTSD. 

Was it worth it to have been a faithful servant?

 Or would it have been better to just curse God's name from the beginning? Where was God throughout all of Job's suffering and pain? He was winning a bet with Satan. 

Makes you wonder where He is through all of the unfairness and inequity and cruelty in the world. 

Where is He now?

 

 when the brain is faulty, it's a big re-wiring job and there's no margin for error. 

When you're going into surgery, you worry you won't wake up

 But with brain surgery, you worry you will wake up but you won't be there when you do. 

 

We all have heroes. 

People we look up to. People we aspire to be, who teach us how to be greater than we are because they are greater than we are. 

They're great if we don't look too closely. 'Cause if we get too close, we realize heroes are just regular people. And regular people can fail us. 

Our heroes aren't special. They're just people. They're like us. They're just trying to survive. They're trying to be happy. Trying to do better. Be better. Feel better

 Heroes aren't more special, more courageous than the rest of us. After all, they're only human. They hurt. They break. They bleed.

 But sometimes, every once in a while, when it matters, they get it right. And that changes everything. 

A hero is only human, but that's the point. If they can do it, so can you. 

So, you keep going. You don't give up. You stand tall. You fight. 

You always show up to save the day.

 

“I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.”

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

“If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how.”

“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”

“That every will must consider every other will its equal — would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.”

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

“The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.”

“Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”

“Ascetic ideals reveal so many bridges to independence that a philosopher is bound to rejoice and clap his hands when he hears the story of all those resolute men who one day said No to all servitude and went into some desert.”

“Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”

“We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it is expressed.”

“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”

“Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.”

“He who humbleth himself wants to be exalted.”

“In the end things must be as they are and have always been — the great things remain for the great, the abysses for the profound, the delicacies and thrills for the refined, and, to sum up shortly, everything rare for the rare.”

“A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”

“Forgetting our intentions is the most frequent of all acts of stupidity.”

“Many people are obstinate about the path once it is taken, few people about the destination.”

“People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that man grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.”

“If a man has a great deal to put in them, a day will have a hundred pockets.”

“The first opinion that occurs to us when we are suddenly asked about a matter is usually not our own, but only the customary one, appropriate to our caste, position, or parentage; our own opinions seldom swim near the surface.”

“Truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.”

“A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences (deeds and misdeeds all included) just as he digests his meats, even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.”

“Everything good, fine, or great men do is first of all an argument against the skeptic inside them.”

“Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.”

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”

“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.”

“What does not kill me makes me stronger.”

“Disobedience — that is the nobility of slaves.”

“Untroubled, scornful, outrageous — that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman and never loves anyone but a warrior.”

“Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time than someone else.”

“I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”

“A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength — life itself is will to power.”

“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.”

“Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.”

“Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of 'pleasure.'”

“The free man is a warrior.”

“That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts.”

“Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong.”

“Every profound spirit needs a mask.”

“It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.”

“The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.”

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

“At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.”

“The best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship.”

“A man far oftener appears to have a decided character from persistently following his temperament than from persistently following his principles.”

“My formula for happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.”

“The sick are the greatest danger for the healthy; it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.”

“One must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong.”

“How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which must be overcome, by the effort it costs to remain on top.”

“Life is continually shedding something that wants to die.”

“Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.”

“No power can maintain itself if only hypocrites represent it.”

“One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.”

“Happiness is the feeling that power increases — that resistance is being overcome.”

“All in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”