Text and Photography by Harvey Lloyd
This blog is part of a series entitled Secrets of Eternal Youth.
Secrets of Eternal Youth
The Blog of Everything
From a Globe Circling Forever Youthful Adventurer, Artist/Photographer
.Who Hangs Out of Helicopters & Flies “The Dead Man’s Curve” Over Every Continent
With Newest Studies On How to Keep Your Brain Young & Healthy
Secrets of Eternal Youth is a Kerouacian road trip through the mental universe with a merry prankster at the wheel. Lloyd is Coyote, the Trickster, who brings us the fire of imagination that is able to see the quantum foam of the universe in the dancing of Jackson Pollack—that allows us to feel the wild excitement of being alive. Secrets is an explosion of metaphor that reprograms our synapses, stretches our minds, and reminds us that we are all youthful poets.
All photographs by Harvey Lloyd, Copyright © 2016
Throughout our lifetimes, we are constantly regenerating new brain cells in the hippocampus, a process called neurogenesis. New stem cells are constantly being born in the hippocampus that ultimately differentiate into fully functional neurons.
–DAVID PERLMUTTER
Eternal youths, guys and gals, It is an endless triumph for our plastic brains which savor these sweets like a famished child. Eternal youths, brothers and sisters, we live an adventure filled and curiosity driven life through the infinity of knowledge.
The words and ideas of so many friends and acquaintances from our many encounters, and from the vast, limitless library of electronic and metaphysical data continue to enrich our lives and feed our brains. Wisdom from the heart triumphs over the balderdash and sales pitches of so many “how to” books! Earnest though they may be, they but prick the surface.
Listen to the mighty voices that thunder through the echoing halls of the library of creation. I am a whisper in the whirlwind, a happy moth. Aren’t you?
The only life worth living is the adventurous life. Of such a life the dominant characteristic is that it is unafraid. It is unafraid of what other people think . . .It does not adapt either its pace or its objectives to the pace and objectives of its neighbors. It thinks its own thoughts, it reads its own books. It develops its own hobbies, and it is governed by its own conscience. The herd may graze where it pleases or stampede where it pleases, but he who lives the adventurous life will remain unafraid when he finds himself alone.
–RAYMOND B. FOSDICK
Secrets of Eternal Youth is a wide ranging rich and fragrant smorgasbord of hundreds of globe circling adventures and tales,
of daring and danger, spiced with the arts and sciences, quotes from
the wise and creative in every discipline from relativity and quantum mechanics to artists, photographers, philosophers, writers and more.
It fills our hungry brains with an endless stream of new ideas. This Amazon River of new ideas enables our brains to make millions of masses of new neurons that neurologists now say help prevent the dementias of Alzheimer’s and aging. This Eternal Youth book should be sampled constantly for pleasure and for the swarms of healthy youthful brain benefits. Ceaseless curiosity, passion, tenacity, love, and endless new knowledge keeps us eternally youthful, long and strong.
There are hordes of hard earned tips on exercise, diet, and above all, gaining the kind of lust for life and the passion you will enjoy for your life and work. That is the supreme way that keeps us forever young. As we know, youth and health are states of mind. When we are passionate about what we do and those we care about, we will stay eternally young, strong and creative forever.
I have flown like a bird in skittering, whumping helicopters around the globe. I have risked my life flying “The Dead Man’s Curve” (too low and slow for safe autorotation descent) hundreds of times secure in the knowledge that doing what you love is what life is about, and fate is the hunter.) “Life’s a great adventure or it is nothing at all,” wrote Helen Keller. Dare to live the strenuous life. My motto: If your life bores you, risk it.
You gonna stay young, live young, live brave, live curious, out o’ the box, out in the glare of the immortal sun, wind and rain, out and about, fly high, you live long and strong and change the world. Retirement is a soft cushy coffin. Never! “Life’s for the living and death’s for the dead, And the depth of a heart is a fathom unknown,” sang Buffy Sainte-Marie, and the bravest of the brave, blind and deaf Helen Keller said “Life’s a great adventure, or it is nothing!”
Eternal youths, brothers and sisters, dere is no greater challenge and joy than having the reckless chutzpah to go risking everything. to cast the crooked dice, live your precious, wild life on your own terms, and to hell with de rest and that means all of ’em. Live it or lose it. Your brain needs exercise my friends, you guys and gals, lazy bums and sons of bitches. Study what you don’t know and drink de wine of wisdom the Norse god Odin gave an eye to the giant Mimir for a drink from de well of wisdom, a damn cheap deal. He den knew de future.
Keep your brain jungles bright with de billions of de young and tender new neurons growing like de colossal gardens of wild flowers inside our priceless gift from Gaia, dee biggest and most complex brains in the known universe. Water it with roaring tides, tsunamis of new ideas. Feed it de incessant cargos of new information, galleons loaded to the gunwales with priceless treasures of new ideas.
Your brain, like de gargantuan wise spider spreads myriad webs and wires across de cosmos. We are de creative factories and silicon valleys of the universe. We are de rising tides of knowledge dat climb above de levees and dams of ignorance and we are de blazing quasars and black holes that conceal De singularities and quantum foam of infinity and immortality.
The neural processes underlying that which we call creativity have nothing to do with rationality. That is to say, if we look at how the brain generates creativity, we will see that it is not a rational process at all; creativity is not born out of reasoning.
— RODOLFO R. LLINAS
Patagonia
Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than those you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the wind in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
—MARK TWAIN
Our twin engine plane ratchets and bumps over Patagonia, above a landscape of mountains covered with snow and ice. We are
on a bumpy roller coaster, up, down, around and up buffeted by strong icy winds. I hold my Canon camera attached to a gyro- stabilizer and shoot out through the aircraft’s window. Too windy to open it. The range of snow white mountains slides by, empty of buildings of any kind.
The aircraft suddenly lurches flinging me, my camera and a seat full of equipment into the air. S.P. gathers the gear quickly, smiling as always. The ranges of mountains march below past the horizon, a frozen desert landscape, beautiful and deadly. We bounce and twist in the windy unstable air. The twin engine aircraft seems to be shaking itself apart.
I brace against the seatback and continue shooting the wild and desolate scene. There is great wild beauty in the desolation of these mountains near the tip of South America.The windy air grows rougher, more violent. If the aircraft holds together, we will land soon.
My senses of space, of distance, and of direction entirely vanished. When I looked for the ground I sometimes looked down, sometimes up, sometimes left, sometimes right. I thoughtI was very high up when I would suddenly be thrown to earthin a near vertical spin. I thought I was very low to the ground and I was pulled up to 3,000 feet in two minutes by the 500-horsepower motor. It danced, it pushed, it tossed…. Ah! la la!
—ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY
