the disappointments accumulate

"I'm speaking not just for myself," he continues. "Somehow, just in the nature of things, you know, the disappointments accumulate, and the obstacles multiply and you sense the destruction of your body, and your mind, and you feel here is the last arena — 'arena' is too big, the last boxing ring, or the last Ouija board, where you can examine some of the ideas that have intrigued you. That have seized you, really."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090227.wcohen0228/BNStory/Entertainment/home

Genius and inspiration

Young people get inspiration, but old people get genius. Not true, but comforting.

"When Balzac had this revelation, after trying and failing to start a dozen businesses using his mother’s money, he raced through the streets of Paris to find his sister, announcing, “I’m about to become a genius!” Charles Bukowski was 49 when it happened: “I have one of two choices -- stay in the post office and go crazy, or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.”"
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_12_013789.php

Though known for his witty and mesmerizing ruminations on psychedelics, consciousness, and the onrushing eschaton, McKenna probably considered himself a naturalist more than anything. He loved butterflies, and nursed a life-long obsession with Alfred Russel Wallace, the Victorian biologist, explorer, butterfly hunter, and Spiritualist who, independently of Darwin, came up with the theory of natural selection.

http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?sec=journal&cat=looking&file=chunkfrom-2008-12-08-1154-0.txt