Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. --- Luke 12:7

To keep from drifting apart, sea otters may sleep holding paws.

Life lessons from Russell Brand, My Booky Wook 2:


The nerdy set that would be providing my backdrop made me more nervous. Staring at it with impending dread, I reflected. Life is not a postcard of life, life is essential and about detail, minutiae and trivia. Tiny anxious pangs, heartburn and stubbed toes. "There's something in my eye. My mouth tastes funny. Have i chipped my tooth?" Titchy, Prufrock facts. Not a broad sweep of a Rothko brush, but pop art dots, like Liechtensteins...It was necessary then as now to ensconce myself in familiarity, estuary accents, working-class values, because after all, it's all just a bit of f-in' laugh, all this, innit> You don't wanna take life too seriously. If you don't laugh you'll f-in cry. I need that kind of attitude around me as I approach the stage, because within it's all Mozart's Requiem for Death and livid Francis Bacon pinks. I lay charred birds at Tiresias's feet as I stare down at the beast. I need ritual. Theatre was born of ritual, religion was born of ritual. If I should die think only this of me, "I thought it would be funny." The yips, the condition that afflicts darts players and golfers, is the inability to let go of the dart or to take the final putt. Darts players before throwing the dart see a line leading form the tip of their arrow to the treble twenty or the bullseye...The perfect visualisation of that line sometimes makes it difficult for them to relinquish the dart and I understand that. It's acknowledging the point at which you interface with reality. Most sports are reactive, interactive, a giddy blur of controlled chaos like football or boxing, you against a swirl of oppositional energy. But the dartboard is never going to come hurtling towards you and slap you round the chops, so unless you seduce it, unless you part the thighs of the oche and make that move, nothing's going to happen. Ritual is necessary to cope with that obligation.

*
From then on in I tried to focus on the fact that I was on the island to work, it wasn't about my neurosis. I struggle in these situations not to let my madness govern me and to let the positive aspects of my character define my life.

*
When you, or your mate, drive across the geometrically impossible expanse that is North America you become hypnotised, as the first pioneers must've been, by its endless possibilities. I met a cowboy near Dodge City who said, "There's only so much horizon people can take," meaning I suppose that some people find opportunity daunting, that limitless sky is frightening with all its scope for change and hope.