“Be patient and wait. Your mud will settle. Your water will be clear.”

—  James Frey

Last update Dec. 2, 2021. History

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James Frey 68
American screenwriter and media presenter 1969

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“A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream.”

Source: Into the Wild (1996), Ch. 14.
Context: Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you constantly feel the abyss pulling at your back. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don't dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge; it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. But as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control. By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. At such moments something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn't the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard. In solo climbing the whole enterprise is held together with little more than chutzpah, not the most reliable adhesive.

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“A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh water keeps on bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained.”

Hays translation
Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee. What then can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just? For instance, if a man should stand by a limpid pure spring, and curse it, the spring never ceases sending up potable water; and if he should cast clay into it or filth, it will speedily disperse them and wash them out, and will not be at all polluted. How then shalt thou possess a perpetual fountain? By forming thyself hourly to freedom conjoined with contentment, simplicity and modesty.
VIII, 51
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

“Goose, goose, goose,
You bend your neck towards the sky and sing.
Your white feathers float on the emerald water,
Your red feet push the clear waves.”

"Ode to the Goose" http://www.chinese-poems.com/lbw1.html (《咏鹅》)
Variant translation:
Geese, geese, geese,
Curl necks and sing.
White feathers floating on the green,
They swim with red webbed feet.
"On Geese", as translated by YeShell in How To Write Classical Chinese Poems (Lulu Press, 2015)

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“Your thoughts move with the deft precision of worm-tracks in the mud.”

Source: The Languages of Pao (1958), Chapter 14 (p. 149)

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“You gave me your mud and I have turned it to gold.”

Tu m’as donné ta boue et j’en ai fait de l’or.
"Ébauche d’un épilogue pour la 2e édition," Les Fleurs du Mal (1861), Appendice II: Autres pièces http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_mal_-_Ebauche_d'un_%C3%A9pilogue_pour_la_2e_%C3%A9dition

“If the (COVID-19) infected (patient) droplets were sneezed at you by a patient and enters your eyes, they will eventually be washed from your eyes to your nose, as both are connected through what is known as a nasolacrimal duct.”

Paul Kellam (1965) British virologist

Paul Kellam (2020) cited in " Medical Experts Claim Wuhan Virus May Be Transmitted Through Your Eyes Or By Touch Alone https://www.worldofbuzz.com/medical-experts-claim-wuhan-virus-may-be-transmitted-through-your-eyes-or-by-touch-alone/" on World of Buzz, 31 January 2020.

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