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Some after-thoughts after the read and some excerpts that were superb: Labels: joker collection, Jostein Gaarder
"People would have gone absolutely wild if the astronomers had discovered another living planet. They just don't let themselves be amazed by their own."
Yes, our existence alone is something we should be taken aback by.
"A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a King or a Jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anyone missing him."
The primary reason why i've began collecting jokers. I interpret the joker as a thinker and one who does not belong to the colony because he asks questions and seeks clarifications about his existence.
"Our lives are part of an unique adventure. Most of us think the world is 'normal' and are constantly hunting for something abnormal-like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don't realise the world is a mystery."
"If our brain was simple enough for us to understand it, we would be so stupid we wouldn't be able to understand it after all"
This sentence is genius. Pure genius.
"If God really exists, then He's clever at playing Hide-and-Seek with his Creations. Maybe He was frightened when He saw what He'd created. So He ran away from everything. YOu know, it's not easy to tell who got the biggest fright;Adam or the Lord. I think such an act of creation terrifies both parties."
And i like this story told in the story the best:
"A Russian cosmonaut and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing Christianity. The brain surgeon was Christian but the cosmonaut wasn't. 'I have been to outer space mny times' bragged the cosmonaut, 'but i have never seen any angels.' The brain surgeon stared in amazement, but then he said, 'And i have operated on many intelligent brains, but i have never seen single thought."
Clearly explains the fact that it doesn't mean that something you cannot see with your naked eye does not exist. We don't know too much and hence, we should not be complacent and think we know a lot. Because as Socrates said "One thing only i know and that is that i know nothing."
"A young child sits building sandcastles in a sandbox. It constantly builds something new, something which it treasures for only a moment before it knocks it all down again. In the same way Time has been given a plant to play with. This is where the history of the world is written, this is where the events are engraved-and smoothed over again. This is where life bubbles like in a witch's cauldron. One day we'll be modelled here, too-from the same brittle material as our ancestors. The wind of Time blows through us, carries us and is us-then drops us again. We are conjured up and tricked away. There is always something lying and brewing in anticipation of taking our place. Because we;re not standing on solid ground, we're not even standing on sand-we are sand.
You cannot hide from Time. You can hide from kings and emperors and possibly from God, but you can't hide from Time. Time follows our every move, because everything around us is immersed in this transient element.
Time doesn't pass, and Time doesn't tick. We are the ones who pass and our watches tick.Time eats its way through history as silently and relentlessly as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. It topples great civilisationsm gnaws at ancient monuments, and wolfs down generation after generation. That's why we speak of the "ravages of time".Time chews and chomps-and we are theones between its jaws.
For a fleeting moment, we are part of a furious swarm. He run around on earth as though it was the most obvious thing of all. But everything will disappear. It will disappear and be replaced with new multitudes, because people are always standing in line. Snapes and masks come and go, and new ideas are always popping up. Themes are never repeated, and a composition never shows up twice...There is nothing as complicated and precious as a person-but we are treated like trash.
We skip around on earth like characters in a fairytale. We nod and smile at each other as to say, "Hi there, we're living at the same time, we're in the smae reality-or the same fairy tale..."Isn't that incredible? We're on a planet in the universe, but soon we'll be swept out of orbit again. Abracadabra-and we're gone.
If we had lived in another century, we would have shared our lives with different people. Today we can easily nod and smile and say hello to thousands of our contemporaries "Hi there! How strange we should be living at exactlly the same time" Or perhaps I bump into someone and open and door and shout:"Hi, soul!"
We're done, but we live this only once. We open our arms and declare that we exist, but then we are swept aside and thrust into the depths of history. Because we are disposable. We are part of an eternal masquerade where the masks come and go.
Thoughts don't flow. The philosophers in Athens believed that there was also something which didn't run. Plato called this the "world of ideas". The sandcastles isn't the most important thing. What is most important is the image of the sandcastle which the child has pictured befor it started to build. Why do you think the child knocks the castle down as soon as it is finished?
Have you ever wanted to draw or make something, but you just havent been able to get it right? YOu try over and over agian, without giving up. It is because the image you have in your head is always more complete than the representations you try to form with your hands. It's the same with everythinig we see around us. We think everything around could be better, and it's because all the images inside our heads have come from the world of ieas. That's where we really belong-not down here in the sandbox, where Time snaps at everything we love. There is another world and it was our soul before it lodged itself in a body and it will return there when the body succumbs to the ravages of time.
Our bodies have the same fate as the sandcastles in the sandbox, nothing can be done about it. But we do have something which Time doesn't gnaw through. That's because it doesn't really belong here. We need to look up from everything flowing around us and see what it is all a representation of."
The words in bold are an overall summary you can get from this long excerpt. And the main ideas i was attracted to. But it's better to read everything. I like the author's interpretation of time, it's something i can accept. Pick some ideas and maybe let me know in the tagboard about how you feel. That way, if this theory stands, a fourth dimension must exist.
"Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake. Of course, you have seen the sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, and everything that moves, but you haven't really seen it at all. It is different for the Joker, because he was put into the world with a flaw:he sees too deeply and too much."
What a philosophical way to end an old year and start a fresh new year..
finished rambling
11:27 PM <3