Tuesday, December 11, 2012

!!!!!

Running out the door last Friday, confident I had packed everything necessary into a single carry-on backpack (my favorite custom-designed Timbuk2), I froze mid-stride in the realization that I missed reading material for the flight. A paperback. Somewhat of an old-school item. Electronic gadgetry having conquered yet another new realm. But I like turning pages and I like taking notes, underlining key phrases, juicy quotes and using what I call the advanced heart-of-the-matter side column notation comment. There is an acronym for this as you might expect, but mostly the AHOMSCNC is rendered to a single punctuation mark. Further, the two most common by far are the question mark and the exclamation point. In recent years this has expanded to icons as well, sometimes leaving a happy face, dollar sign or star scribbled in the white space. I am quite sure the electronic gadgetry offers this handy feature in binary form, so I am not telling you (the smart, efficient and upscale of you that travel with a reader) anything you don't already know. 

However, in illustration of my analog technique, here are a few highlight examples from my most recent trips that I thought you might enjoy. Which is somewhat ironic because 100% of you are reading this on an electronic device of some sort. 

"It's the moment when some tension is erased. So the happy life has its recurring set of rhythms: difficult to harmony, difficult to harmony." * David Brooks 

"Neurotic obsessed suffering is essential for greatness." ** David K. Reynolds  

"All of life is the exercise of risk."  <  William Sloane Coffin  

"To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium."  :) Eric Hoffer  

"The three goals of exercise: 1) Rejuvenate the body and cultivate the mind, 2) Remove stress, 3) Develop mind-body coordination."  $$$ John Douillard 

"In order to satisfy the deepest desires of our heart we must embrace the taboo."  &? David Deida  

"If evil comes from God, there must be something good in evil. Listen to me because you are a man, and men are not used to thinking in the right way of everything that is."  ? Umberto Eco  

"Go all out or all go home." RCVman (8,220 Google results) !!!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love my new e-reader, but I agree that those little marks in the margins, highlighting, and poignant notes can't be replaced. NTM the smell of books, old and new, and turning the pages is something I really like. The Kindle Fire, OTOH, is really cool! NTM that Amazon makes it entirely too easy to spend LOTS on reading material!

KML5 said...

SO FUNNY. I bought my sister a Kindle Fire TODAY for her birthday instead of a book. Hey anonymous, please invent a screen name so I feel like I am conversing with a real person. Cool? Thanks for your comments.