procrastination station

last night i did something i haven't done in months. i opened my computer and looked at fun websites and goofed off. a friend came over for dinner and shared two funny website with me...and from there i lost myself in the time-warp abyss of the internet.

it started here...awkward family photos.com
and went to here...things christian culture likes.com
and (of course) included a visit to kittens inspired by kittens

i ran across this passage that i really like (oddly enough, it was included in a post about texting/tweeting during church services).

'There are quiet places also in the mind', he said meditatively. 'But we
build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately — to put a stop to the
quietness. ... All the thoughts, all the preoccupations in my head — round
and round, continually, What's it for? What's it all for? To put an end to
the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost that it
isn't there. Ah, but it is; it is there, in spite of everything, at the back
of everything. Lying awake at night — not restlessly, but serenely, waiting
for sleep — the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken
bits ... It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like the outward quiet
of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows — a crystal quiet, a growing,
expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and
terrifying ... For one's alone in the crystal, and there's no support from
the outside, there is nothing external and important, nothing external and
trivial to pull oneself up by or stand on ... There is nothing to laugh at
or feel enthusiast about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and
unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is
almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressively lovely and
wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And, oh,
inexpressively terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize
you and engulf you, you'd die; all the regular, habitual daily part of you
would die .... one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet,
arduously in some strange, unheard of manner.'
– Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay

that's all from here. happy rain-sun-cloud-rain-sun day!