the incomparable privilege of existing (10 November 2016)

Hà Giang photo essay by PIVOT featured in Frankie Magazine

Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.

- Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself

Rose Liu, photography featured in Frankie Magazine

It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be , is every bit as strong as ours-arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additions existence. Life, in short just wants to be.

- Bill Bryson, A short history of nearly everything

Vince McIntyre on his organic farm in Argenta, BC, Canada

Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really.

- Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods

Sannah Kvist photography featured in Frankie Magazine

Travelling is more fun -hell, life is more fun - if you can treat it as a series of impulses.

- Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

- Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself

The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water. They have a society that is prosperous, well ordered, and instinctively egalitarian. The food is excellent. The beer is cold. The sun nearly always shines. There is coffee on every corner. Life doesn't get much better than this.

- Bill Bryson, In A Sunburned Country