Jonathan Simcoe

The clatter of his precious pans as they fell down into the dark was like a death-knell to his heart.

After the thrill of independence and experiments in self-actualization, drinking your so-called “potential for Being” to the dregs, when the exhaustion starts to set in and then eventually morphs into a kind of self-disgust, you can reach a point where you know you want a different life but are enchained to the one you’ve made.

“You outta your tree?” yelped Stan. “’Choo say ’is name for?”

The gospel is a stark message, and it intrudes into the world’s thinking and priorities with sharp, bracing truths.

First, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle set limits on what we could know about the subatomic world. Oh well, we say. None of us lives in a subatomic world. It doesn’t make any practical difference as we go through our lives.

In midafternoon we reached a bizarre procession of freestanding ice pinnacles, the largest nearly 100 feet high, known as Phantom Alley. Sculpted by the intense solar rays, glowing a radioactive shade of turquoise, the towers reared like giant shark’s teeth out of the surrounding rubble as far as the eye could see.

As Ang Dorje’s reputation for being a strong and resourceful climber spread among Western climbers, he was promoted to the role of sirdar, and in 1992 he went to work for Rob Hall on Everest; by the launch of Hall’s 1996 expedition, Ang Dorje had climbed the peak three times.

In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lórien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world.

If you believe in something to be correct, focus on showing your work to prove it. Authority derives naturally from merit, not the other way around.