TRAVELS, A BOOK BY Michael Crichton
It's 3 am and I was up as usual. Did my morning rituals, made coffee and turned on the pc. Checked my schedule for the day, checked my emails, checked my website and read the messages, and then I checked my sitemeter. And there I saw a link to somebody's haloscan comment box and it was cbs'. His most recent entry is a very moving review about the movie 'In America' and a far more moving discussion ensued between him and Jobert about life, about changes, about moving away, about failure and about hope. I don't know. Maybe you'd have to have been reading them for sometime for you to grasp what I'm talking about. In all probability they were just playing around, but that is not how it struck me.
Just last night, I picked up a random book from the library, just to help me sleep. It was Travels, by Michael Crichton. I had to exercise discipline again and put down the book cause by the looks of it, it won't be serving the purpose for which I got it, not by a mile. So I can't give a review cause I've just started it, besides I don't really do that cause I am not qualified, nor do I feel worthy of reviewing anything. I'd keep my views to myself and let the book speak for itself.
Although I've finished the first chapter before I decided to put it down, what comes next is just part of the preface (yes, I read that part too). It's what made me decide to keep on reading. Here goes...
'Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surrounding, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes - with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.
I eventually realized that direct experience is the most valuable experience I can have. Western man is so surrounded by ideas, so bombarded with opinions, concepts, and information structures of all sorts, that it becomes difficult to experience anything without the intervening filter of these structures. And the natural world - our traditional source of direct insights - is rapidly disappearing. Modern city-dwellers cannot even see the starts at night. This humbling reminder of man's place in the greater scheme of things, which human beings formerly saw once every twenty-four hours, is denied them. It's no wonder that people lose their bearings, that they lose track of who they really are, and what their lives are really about.'
It's 3 am and I was up as usual. Did my morning rituals, made coffee and turned on the pc. Checked my schedule for the day, checked my emails, checked my website and read the messages, and then I checked my sitemeter. And there I saw a link to somebody's haloscan comment box and it was cbs'. His most recent entry is a very moving review about the movie 'In America' and a far more moving discussion ensued between him and Jobert about life, about changes, about moving away, about failure and about hope. I don't know. Maybe you'd have to have been reading them for sometime for you to grasp what I'm talking about. In all probability they were just playing around, but that is not how it struck me.
Just last night, I picked up a random book from the library, just to help me sleep. It was Travels, by Michael Crichton. I had to exercise discipline again and put down the book cause by the looks of it, it won't be serving the purpose for which I got it, not by a mile. So I can't give a review cause I've just started it, besides I don't really do that cause I am not qualified, nor do I feel worthy of reviewing anything. I'd keep my views to myself and let the book speak for itself.
Although I've finished the first chapter before I decided to put it down, what comes next is just part of the preface (yes, I read that part too). It's what made me decide to keep on reading. Here goes...
'Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surrounding, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes - with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.
I eventually realized that direct experience is the most valuable experience I can have. Western man is so surrounded by ideas, so bombarded with opinions, concepts, and information structures of all sorts, that it becomes difficult to experience anything without the intervening filter of these structures. And the natural world - our traditional source of direct insights - is rapidly disappearing. Modern city-dwellers cannot even see the starts at night. This humbling reminder of man's place in the greater scheme of things, which human beings formerly saw once every twenty-four hours, is denied them. It's no wonder that people lose their bearings, that they lose track of who they really are, and what their lives are really about.'
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