The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons #3

"She had never been here before, had made herself not come before, and now that she was here, she desperately wanted to feel something, hear something, as if some voice of caution or inspiration or perhaps merely commiseration would come to her here."

Sightseeing can suck. How often do people hike the same trail before they are bored?

Taking in a gorgeous view can suck. How long can you stare?

A delicious meal can suck. What if I don't even know what I'm supposed to be experiencing?

Expectations will destroy anything and the lack of overwhelming emotion will bury you. Maybe I go to the wrong restaurants.

You can stand atop a mountain and look out for miles, but all you can do is look. You can't engage with the view. You can't step forward and explore the miniature world. Look at a wooded mountain range from a distance and it begs to be explored, to be traveled. You go.

And it's woods. The scale of the mountain is reduced to a slope of dirt. So you climb to the top and seen an amazing view, begging to be explored.

Still, I'm a sucker for views. And I'm trying to figure out what it is about art that captivates people in near religious hysteria. I see a painting and I am unmoved.

There is a size to the universe that can only be explored in your head. Physically, we are too insignificant to experience it in a tactile way. How can we truly be in a moment when it's so much bigger than we are?

I love climbing on rocks and exploring creek beds and scrambling up embankments.

I wish I could reduce the size of mountain ranges. I want to experience the range, not a slope. I want to feel the structure of the universe. I want to feel lightyears the way we feel hours.



I want life to be bigger, cosmically bigger.