## Metadata - Author: [[Martin Shaw]] - Full Title: Snowy Tower - Category: #books ## Highlights - Although some would rather be done with myths and folktale and swiftly produce new stories of harmonious and stress-free relatedness to the living world, it is like trying to outrun your own shadow. Naive. All those power games, betrayals, and paradoxes that myths and fairy tales engage with keep revealing to us difficult inner material, material that comes with the labour of being a human—a human with a history of betrayal, urbanity and a tricky lower intestine, and not always the pristine mind of the elk or starling. That’s useful as we turn our heads toward wild intelligence. Its rather domestic grit reminds us of the village we come from as well as the forest we long for. Human initiation always calls for the messy business of dwelling in the crossroads of both. ([Location 250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00J75N4TS&location=250)) - The old saying goes, if you aren’t seen clearly by thirty people (a typical size of an old tribal group), then you will try to get the attention of thirty million to compensate. We are addicted to disclosure. At the same time many deep things need to be said that aren’t—it’s a paradoxical situation. ([Location 469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00J75N4TS&location=469)) - we are designed to live a life of vocation, intensity, and occasional swagger. When that instinct gets caught in the slipstream of the need for busyness and the “next big thing,” it starts to distort, right down at the root. Our vocation becomes demonstrated by how many demands there are for our time, our intensity by how many new experiences we manage to cram in, and the style gets relegated to our six-month update on the latest phone. This is not the life that myth is hinting at. ([Location 472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00J75N4TS&location=472)) - certain deep moods could not be met by other people, ([Location 483](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00J75N4TS&location=483))