Nobel Prize winner, author V. S. Naipaul, during his journey to Africa, is told by an initiate into the Pygmies rites, that “Here when an old person dies we say a library has burnt down.” 

Trees-on-wheels*, we (humans) come to an arresting stop amidst the forest of life.  And as we fall, we expose our age-rings of life’s wisdom. 

But when a human tree falls alone in the forest does it make a sound?

Visit an elder sometime.

Source:

The Nobelist and the Pygmies by Eliza Griswold (The New York Times Book Review, Nov. 7, 2010)

Trees-on-Wheels* – title of a book I am working on.

1.
Unsolicited, reality streams.
If your ear’s already trained to the sound of reality, you hear nothing but random noise.
If, however, your ear is epistemologically* still new, you hear marvelous melodies of meaning.
2.
We all start out as equal.
But then we get preferred, selected, chosen.
In: the beautiful (as the mind’s eye sees it)! Out: the ugly!
3.
We keep trying to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio**.
We seek more signal, we seek less noise.
We find more discrimination, we find less harmony.