It can get pretty noisy up there on Dempsey Hill.

Oriental magpie robin

A baby monitor lizard

Sun skink

WALL*E spider

Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.

~ Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, book VI of the Dune Chronicles

“Many histories are largely worthless because prejudiced, written to please one powerful group or another. Wait for your eyes to be opened, my dear. We are the best historians. We were there.”

“And my viewpoint will change daily?” Very introspective.

“That’s a lesson the Bashar reminded us to keep fresh in our minds. The past must be reinterpreted by the present.”

“I’m not sure I will enjoy that, Mother Superior. So many moral decisions.”

“Moral decisions are always easy to recognize,” Odrade said. “They are where you abandon self-interest.”

Streggi looked at Odrade with awe. “The courage it must take!”

“Not courage!” Not even desperation. What we do is, in its most basic sense, natural. Things done because there is no other choice.”

“Sometimes you make me feel ignorant, Mother Superior.”

“Excellent! That’s beginning wisdom. There are many kinds of ignorance, Streggi. The basest is to follow yur own desires without examining them. Sometimes, we do it unconsciously. Hone your sensitivity. Be aware of what you do unconsciously. Always ask: ‘When I did that, what was I trying to gain?’ ”

~ Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, book VI of the Dune Chronicles

A Common Greenback surrounded by Asiatic Toad(let)s; taken with my N73 at the Botanic Gardens.