https://silasjelley.com/feeds/everything/ /icon/48.ico Silas Jelley reply@silasjelley.com 2026-05-20T13:01:04Z tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:21a11c5c-06f4-4cea-af00-1fc3c83a08de 2026-05-20T13:21:04Z 2026-05-20T13:21:04Z <p>What can we make of any of this? It is the surreal and unique condition of our age. But these facts hold the same intensity and mystery as any lonely peak. The world is as rich as it ever was. Any belief less is cowardice and self consolation - Gerard Manley Hopkins <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur">opened and closed that question</a> 150 years ago. Whenever we feel most keenly that “all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil”, a second, greater voice replies: “And for all this, nature is never spent”.</p> <p>Distance has been destroyed. The world lurches forward in phantasmagoric collage. We can run from this fact, seeking ever deeper tracts of jungle to relive the idyll of the Victorian explorer - window shopping online for the last “vision quests” on the market - or we can accept the eternal and unvarying charge of the traveler: to remake the world as we experience it - and to be drowned, laughing, in the new.</p>1:21pm on May 20, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Like shining from shook foil, 2024”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:0909487b-be72-4221-a3a8-7fad103a001a 2026-05-20T13:14:20Z 2026-05-20T13:14:20Z <p>To be saturated in any aspect of the world is noble.</p>1:14pm on May 20, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Like shining from shook foil, 2024”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:1d81664e-0426-4a91-a62d-ce25e8351aef 2026-05-20T13:09:30Z 2026-05-20T13:09:30Z <p>When he began to travel as a student he first went to Iceland and Norway - distant northern lands, places with icy and volcanic landscapes - but he felt isolated by language, and they did not answer precisely his imagination of northness. In contrast, Scotland offered the first real places to correspond to his inner world. Minutes after his arrival in 1979 on the Hamburg to Newcastle ferry, he saw his first British road sign reading simply ‘The North’. This generalization, as opposed to the precise reckoning of kilometers on Continental signs, struck him as transformational, poetic.</p>1:09pm on May 20, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Peter Davidson, The Idea of North, 2004-11-145, Reaktion Books”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:c806596e-7a94-4dbc-b820-aa6ecca26c44 2026-05-20T12:10:28Z 2026-05-20T12:10:28Z <p>Enough! Have some dignity and leave that stone unturned. Suck down whatever’s at hand and quick, back to your oars! There will be time enough for Yelp reviews in the grave. Fly wherever’s cheapest and learn to throw knives in the first bar you find. Take a ferry to an island off the coast and miss the day’s last return. You’ll meet a woman there with clairvoyant eyes who will press a warm stone into your palm. Your leisure should be ferocious. It should take more from you than you thought you had to give, but too many face their vacation like a period of mourning.</p>12:10pm on May 20, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Like shining from shook foil, 2024”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:6c860cad-e1e4-4255-84a9-186555720887 2026-05-19T18:40:59Z 2026-05-19T18:40:59Z <blockquote><p><p>I understood then that if I were to relive those scenes in the Conciergerie and Beaulieu as intensely as I had felt them when they occurred, I would have to be alone, completely alone. It was a relief to know this, and I realized that the communal life that lay in store would produce new needs, new responses, new projects.</p></p> <cite>— <a href="/2026/05/08/201404">Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)</a></cite></blockquote> <p>A reminder that isolation fosters and enlarges resentment, and that only living communally can drive it out.</p> 6:40pm on May 19, 2026<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“May 19, 2026 6.40PM”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:39b4cbe0-c5d2-40f8-acc9-9b10f65f0c7f 2026-05-19T14:38:57Z 2026-05-19T14:38:57Z <p>It would be impossible to guess at a man’s way of living his life without being locked in it with him.</p>2:38pm on May 19, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. Prisoner of the Sand, 1939, Ukemi (2016 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:0d51d2bb-e66a-4cb0-b422-16bff9af4012 2026-05-18T19:36:13Z 2026-05-18T19:36:13Z <p>You don’t make over a life the way you sew on a button.</p>7:36pm on May 18, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:62e59c99-f60f-481d-b38e-4ac830ecf8d4 2026-05-18T19:35:37Z 2026-05-18T19:35:37Z <p>We have too much technological progress, life is too hectic, and our society has only one goal: to invent still more technological marvels to make life even easier and better. The craving for every new scientific discovery breeds a hunger for greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the soul, kills compassion, understanding, nobility. It leaves no time for caring what happens to other people, least of all criminals.</p>7:35pm on May 18, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:11b327eb-4405-4c11-9aca-7ed2b52f5adc 2026-05-18T19:21:01Z 2026-05-18T19:21:01Z <p>I must rehabilitate myself in my own eyes first, then in the eyes of others.</p>7:21pm on May 18, 2026 from Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:ef982097-602e-4b18-9c7e-df70d57051d7 2026-05-18T12:48:41Z 2026-05-18T12:48:41Z <p>If you’re too hot, take your socks off.<br/>If you’re too cold, put your socks on.<br/>If you don’t have socks, find socks.</p> <p>Often we overcomplicate life.</p> 12:48pm on May 18, 2026<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“May 18, 2026 12.48PM”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:b4dd345e-0ab3-4a8d-82dd-1ab42e492ae8 2026-05-18T12:47:15Z 2026-05-18T12:47:15Z <p>On working days, that’s how I feel when I have to call, say, my bank. Too much movement. <em>Entirely</em> too much movement. Calling the bank. Listening to the dial pad options. Going through all the details with the bank person. Too much movement.</p> <p>It’s a kind of death for the creative part of the mind. The ability to enter into Bookworld is murdered by saying your account number out loud. I don’t know why that’s so, it just is. Maybe it has something to do with the confined particularities of accounts, of banking, of paying bills, for example. How these systems are now more and more complex. Intricate in ways that bring no pleasure or satisfaction of completion. Are never complete. Convenient, yes, in some ways but all necessitating that you: pick up the Mediation Device in order to engage.</p> <p>Touching the device is too much movement. The device is tricky like that. It looks inert, the black mirror. There on the counter. Very demure. It’s a Stone of Terrenon made modern. It will teach you the name of the shadow that haunts you while binding you twice over. To make the call you must touch the stone. To move your hand to the stone is not a few feet, it’s a few lifetimes. You touch the stone and lose a life, lose a path. You are rewired. It’s so much more movement than you could ever imagine.</p>12:47pm on May 18, 2026 from Shymkent, Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Craig Mod, Phone Calls vs. Creative Work, Zero Milestone, 2026”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:fd308c39-f83b-45bd-b632-7883eb3d6156 2026-05-17T23:05:14Z 2026-05-17T23:05:14Z <p>So don’t be a tourist or a disappointed explorer; be something else. Have a reason for each place you go - or better still, have no reason at all. But be sure to avoid that unhallowed middle ground: the week off work with a list of someone else’s recommendations, the expedition that attempts to claim someone else’s heroism. Unlike the early 20th century, the present day reserves fewer spaces for the intrepid alone. Institutional backing and a high tolerance for discomfort no longer guarantee a serene or transformative experience. Today’s travel requires different sensitivities.</p>11:05pm on May 17, 2026 from Shymkent, Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Like shining from shook foil, Shore Leave, 2024”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:bf010723-6969-4232-8e29-47a390416cb8 2026-05-17T14:14:13Z 2026-05-17T14:14:13Z <p>I’ve met many abroad who are addicted to this form of freedom; I stayed adrift for many years partly to cling to it myself. But for its brief compensations, it’s almost always a trap, a poor substitute for simply enjoying the desert and then passing-by.</p>2:14pm on May 17, 2026 from Shymkent, Shymkent, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henry Weikel, Summer in the Kingdom II, Shore Leave, 2023”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:b602ee75-0a5a-4316-8304-97372bf94465 2026-05-16T20:58:41Z 2026-05-16T20:58:41Z <p>Those who trust others are trustworthy themselves.</p>8:58pm on May 16, 2026 from Saryaghash, Turkistan, Kazakhstan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:e6d0222d-671d-480a-ade7-493852347194 2026-05-11T09:03:36Z 2026-05-11T09:03:36Z <p>One could say in the first quarter-century of my life, that while I was always fascinated by programming, I could never overcome the guilt of not really knowing whether the tool I am building right now isn’t already superceded by some much better implementation someone else has already written 30 or 40 years ago; I could write a TSV-aware search and replace, or I could find out about awk and solve that entire class of problems in one fell swoop, for example. My central conceit is that this is a trap. You need to reinvent a couple of wheels to get to the edge of what we know about wheel-making, not a thousand wheels, and not zero; probably four or five is sufficient in most domains, maybe closer to twenty or thirty in the most epistemically rigorous and developed fields like mathematics or computer science. Each wheel you reinvent, and every directed question you ask along the way, will propel you faster to the true frontier than that same amount of time spent in idle study, or even five times that amount.</p>9:03am on May 11, 2026 from Jizzakh Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Andrew Quinn, Replacing a 3 GB SQLite database with a 10 MB FST (finite state transducer) binary, 2026”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:6cc4b669-0a72-4b3a-8c31-84743e373d25 2026-05-09T17:05:28Z 2026-05-09T17:05:28Z <p>Instead of buying your children all the things you never had, you should teach them all the things you were never taught. Material wears out but knowledge stays.</p>5:05pm on May 9, 2026 from Samarqand, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“unknown”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:6f690ead-fc03-46eb-808d-12a920d96fa5 2026-05-09T16:20:35Z 2026-05-09T16:20:35Z <p>In the kaleidoscope that passed before my eyes, I saw disconnected pictures and felt a confusion of sensations that were extraordinarily precise in outline.</p>4:20pm on May 9, 2026 from Samarqand Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:830a1327-5fa1-4548-84e7-30c0a2fa3cbe 2026-05-08T20:15:10Z 2026-05-08T20:15:10Z <p>I understood then that if I were to relive those scenes in the Conciergerie and Beaulieu as intensely as I had felt them when they occurred, I would have to be alone, completely alone. It was a relief to know this, and I realized that the communal life that lay in store would produce new needs, new responses, new projects.</p>8:15pm on May 8, 2026 from Samarqand Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:7180f705-55ce-428f-91a7-1f6d2767c4f7 2026-05-08T19:51:18Z 2026-05-08T19:51:18Z <p>It was a knockout blow—a punch so overwhelming that I didn’t get back on my feet for fourteen years. And to deliver a blow like that, they went to a lot of trouble.</p>7:51pm on May 8, 2026 from Samarqand Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:7f69d527-371c-424f-9a58-ee2bcfe106b2 2026-05-08T19:50:44Z 2026-05-08T19:50:44Z <p>No nation has the right to revenge itself or rush to eliminate people just because they cause society anxiety. They should be healed instead of given such inhuman punishment.</p>7:50pm on May 8, 2026 from Samarqand Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Henri Charrière, Papillon, 1968, William Morrow (2012 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:4a42743c-5a7f-481a-b6c4-81ecf6d7025d 2026-05-05T14:34:15Z 2026-05-05T14:34:15Z <p>Being in an awkward situation is actually not that bad. It sucks in the moment, but then you just take a few minutes to calm down and then you move on with your life. You’re ok.</p>2:34pm on May 5, 2026 from Navoiy Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Thienan Tran, Talking to 35 Strangers at the Gym, 2026”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:0017dac0-81ee-4b73-b3fa-185ab31bca30 2026-05-03T11:42:35Z 2026-05-03T11:42:35Z <p>Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.</p>11:42am on May 3, 2026 from Bukhara Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, 1847”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:5f8e6ead-a09f-4f68-8722-484c489bceb9 2026-05-03T11:40:56Z 2026-05-03T11:40:56Z <p>Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship, be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.</p>11:40am on May 3, 2026 from Yangibozor Qishlog'i, Bukhara, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“David Foster Wallace, This Is Water, 2005”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:edfa27f6-7650-4a3f-8f0f-ddcdf8f92c63 2026-05-02T11:52:40Z 2026-05-02T11:52:40Z <p>You can travel the whole world, but there are always new things to learn.</p>11:52am on May 2, 2026 from Bukhara, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Biff in Christopher Moore's, Lamb, 2002, William Morrow”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:274ae141-0992-449f-9d30-fe08ee9264dc 2026-05-01T22:32:13Z 2026-05-01T22:32:13Z <p>Routine feeds the illusion of safety.</p>10:32pm on May 1, 2026 from Bukhara, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Biff in Christopher Moore's, Lamb, 2002, William Morrow”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:bb4ce02d-35c2-44ef-a510-0bd7a2e48c7b 2026-05-01T21:23:11Z 2026-05-01T21:23:11Z <p>All fear comes from trying to see the future.</p>9:23pm on May 1, 2026 from Bukhara, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Joshua in Christopher Moore's, Lamb, 2002, William Morrow”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:1a774403-656d-43a1-aea8-89f514e4b5f7 2026-05-01T21:15:04Z 2026-05-01T21:15:04Z <p>Any freedom that can be given, can be taken away.</p>9:15pm on May 1, 2026 from Bukhara, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Joshua in Christopher Moore's, Lamb, 2002, William Morrow”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:20132a94-c63b-4099-8174-5936c7328b85 2026-04-28T01:26:34Z 2026-04-28T01:26:34Z <p>The writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? And, Can I do it?</p>1:26am on April 28, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 1989, Harper & Row”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:0065d64a-0318-492d-b1f9-23f41e9cac95 2026-04-27T17:09:55Z 2026-04-27T17:09:55Z <p>When we accept our role, even the most modest of roles, only then will we be happy, only then can you live in peace, and die in peace. Because what gives meaning to life, gives meaning to death.</p>5:09pm on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. Barcelona and Madrid, 1939, Ukemi (2016 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:c68336ba-e786-485d-be44-4197839db24b 2026-04-27T16:43:12Z 2026-04-27T16:43:12Z <p>You can classify men as men from the right and men from the left, hunchbacks and non-hunchbacks, fascists and democrats. And these distinctions are unassailable, but the truth you know, is that which simplifies the world and not that which creates chaos. The truth is the language that identifies the world. […] The truth is not that which explains, it is that which simplifies.</p>4:43pm on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. Barcelona and Madrid, 1939, Ukemi (2016 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:a87c1a41-9bd9-427f-8d16-8ce54f4cff13 2026-04-27T16:43:12Z 2026-04-27T16:43:12Z <p>Nothing is easier than to divide men into rightists and leftists, hunchbacks and straightbacks, fascists and democrats—and these distinctions will be perfectly just. But truth, we know, is that which clarifies, not that which confuses. Truth is the language which expresses universality.</p>4:43pm on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. Barcelona and Madrid, 1939, Harcourt Brace (1992 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:69542e1a-3eff-4b99-a17f-7f3fdfe9e3a8 2026-04-27T14:29:43Z 2026-04-27T14:29:43Z <p>A man’s perception of truth is what makes him the man he is.</p>2:29pm on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. Barcelona and Madrid, 1939, Ukemi (2016 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:1752ba01-064c-4221-97e1-0f97eff5a706 2026-04-27T14:24:27Z 2026-04-27T14:24:27Z <p>To love is not to look at one another, but to look together in the same direction.</p>2:24pm on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. Barcelona and Madrid, 1939, Ukemi (2016 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:3d50dfc8-7ae0-4028-8def-cf636a9fa080 2026-04-27T13:38:04Z 2026-04-27T13:38:04Z <p>Once more I had rubbed shoulders with a truth that I did not comprehend. I believed myself lost, I thought I had reached the bottom of despair, and then once I had resigned myself to my fate, I knew peace. It seems at such times that one discovers oneself and becomes one’s own friend. An essential need one was not aware of, bringing with it an impregnable sense of self-fulfillment.</p>1:38pm on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939, Ukemi (2016 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:95c46afc-8b09-4971-8a2b-7f3bba0c5af9 2026-04-27T11:27:23Z 2026-04-27T11:27:23Z <p>You, Bedouin of Libya who saved our lives, though you will dwell for ever in my memory yet I shall never be able to recapture your features. You are Humanity and your face comes into my mind simply as man incarnate. You, our beloved fellowman, did not know who we might be, and yet you recognized us without fail. And I, in my turn, shall recognize you in the faces of all mankind. You came towards me in an aureole of charity and magnanimity bearing the gift of water. All my friends and all my enemies marched towards me in your person. It did not seem to me that you were rescuing me: rather did it seem that you were forgiving me. And I felt I had no enemy left in all the world.</p>11:27am on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. 8, Prisoner of the Sand, 1939, Harcourt Brace (1992 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:36ca160c-16e2-45af-9ec5-73f9855102de 2026-04-27T11:25:24Z 2026-04-27T11:25:24Z <p>Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious. Not necessary to life, but rather life itself, thou fillest us with a gratification that exceeds the delight of the senses. By thy might, there return into us treasures that we had abandoned. By thy grace, there are released in us all the dried-up runnels of our heart. Of the riches that exist in the world, thou art the rarest and also the most delicate—thou so pure within the bowels of the earth! A man may die of thirst lying beside a magnesian spring. He may die within reach of a salt lake. He may die though he hold in his hand a jug of dew, if it be inhabited by evil salts. For thou, water, art a proud divinity, allowing no alteration, no foreignness in thy being. And the joy that thou spreadest is an infinitely simple joy.</p>11:25am on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. 8, Prisoner of the Sand, 1939, Harcourt Brace (1992 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:7cce4619-b8c4-4501-8b0e-6aacae304b59 2026-04-27T11:03:53Z 2026-04-27T11:03:53Z <p>It is not danger I love. I know what I love. It is life.</p>11:03am on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. 8, Prisoner of the Sand, 1939, Harcourt Brace (1992 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:c8c51836-b2b4-479d-8f0f-490b3fdb672b 2026-04-27T11:01:45Z 2026-04-27T11:01:45Z <p>I regret nothing. I played, I lost.</p>11:01am on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. Prisoner of the Sand, 1939, Ukemi (2016 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:912c4dd2-407f-4e95-89ef-60444dc3e65e 2026-04-27T10:25:10Z 2026-04-27T10:25:10Z <p>The desert is as smooth as marble. By day it throws no shadow; by night it hands you over naked to the wind. Not a tree, not a hedge, not a rock behind which I could seek shelter. The wind was charging me like a troop of cavalry across open country. I turned and twisted to escape it: I lay down, stood up, lay down again, and still I was exposed to its freezing lash. I had no strength to run from the assassin and under the sabre-stroke I tumbled to my knees, my head between my hands.</p>10:25am on April 27, 2026 from Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. 8, Prisoner of the Sand, 1939, Harcourt Brace (1992 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p> tag:silasjelley.com,2020-08-20:1dc7ed7c-ce75-403f-bbe9-50b218367fdd 2026-04-25T10:23:22Z 2026-04-25T10:23:22Z <p>When a man dies, an unknown world passes away.</p>10:23am on April 25, 2026 from Xorazm Region, Uzbekistan<p><a href="mailto:reply@silasjelley.com?subject=Reply%20to:%20“Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Ch. 7, Men of the Desert, 1939, Harcourt Brace (1992 edition)”">Reply via email</a></p>