As soon as I heard his voice, I felt as if a wind swept through my head. I let shoes be shoes, and it seemed to me that the distracted phase of mind I had just experienced dated from a long-vanished period, maybe a year or two back, and was about to be quietly effaced from my memory. I began to observe the old fellow.”
-Knut Hamsun
Hunger
The communication is only an effort to bring the hearer to the edge of the abyss; it is a signpost, not the thing itself.”
-Joseph Campbell
Pathways to Bliss
Fuck, I thought, in reference to the passing, fragmented awe I felt about my laptop working. For most of my life I had believed everything was broken. I had believed everything was broken in a manner that, I’d only recently begun to understand, blindly assumed things that weren’t true. My whole life I had been oriented toward the world in a manner that reflected me back. I’d always started with myself, only pretending to look outward, and only pretending to look inward too. I’d always viewed malice and tragedy as the only true facts of my life, ignoring everything else that didn’t fit my self-serving narrative. I had believed that everything was broken when in fact the opposite was true: everything worked! Even that which didn’t seem to work worked. It’s an unbelievable miracle, I thought, parroting Jordan Castro.”
-Jordan Castro
The Novelist
You’re about this sweet spot stretch… Even though the rest are walking higher up on the beach, just above the slight plateau that marks where the highest tide reaches. Doing your loner, off-on-your-own-thing, but whatever. You’ve always been on that. Only with her were you not. But then it became about her having to be on that with you, in order to be with you. Till she wanted to be off with others and not on that off-on-your-own alone shit with you. She told you read Hannah Arendt that Hannah Arendt was the antidote to your Heidegger off-on-your-own alone shit. You tried. You did try.
You keep following this water’s edge and you’ll be OK. Too far either way and you’re fucked. You want to record this somehow. To not forget it. You’d write it down but you’re too stoned and anyway you’re walking. You double tap outta Notes. Switch to Camera. Start taking photos, one after another, even though each is a Live Photo so is already a series. You’ve gotta catch every angle of every wave. Every new iteration. Every photo isn’t quite it, but maybe the next will be. You stop after about twelve. Nine months later, you delete all of them to free up space on your phone.”
-Sean Thor Conroe
Fuccboi
In town, everything was chaotic and contradictory. News from abroad was censored, but travel was left unrestricted. Confused was increased by a spate of new and conflicting regulations, and by the arbitrary way controls were imposed or lifted. The one thing that would have clarified the position was an overall picture of world events; but this was prohibited by the determination of the politicians to ban all foreign news. My impression was that they had lost their heads, did not know how to deal with the approaching danger, and hoped to keep the public in ignorance of its exact nature until a plan had been evolved.”
-Anna Kavan
Ice
1967
Thoughts were snakes shooting through high grasses. Now you see them, now you don’t. As you walk in the high grasses, you must take a stick and beat the ground. Scare up the snakes, pursue them to the edge of the field into the open and see them, exorcise them. You must perform this ritual now. In the middle of the night, alone with pen and paper, you sound out the snakey thoughts. You write one of those letters that’s never meant to be sent, isn’t addressed to anyone. No one’s eyes are meant to see this. This is a private ritual. The writer, the reader are trying to get as close together as possible. They are coming together, sealed in a word on a page where you’re trying to make the shooting thoughts come out in the pen. Shoot them down your arm, through your fingers, and out the end of your pen. Make them visible. You know it’s primitive: filling up a page so you can empty your mind. But you’re doing what you must: trying to let go. You’re starting by addressing yourself:”
-Constance DeJong
Modern Love
Just then the alarm went off; she was awake already, thinking of so many things in the warm coziness of her bed. As dawn broke she regretted that it was now winter and you could not see the lovely colors that accompanied the sun. She wondered if Guido, who said that all colors were really one, was thinking the same thought. ‘How lovely,’ said Ginia to herself and got up.”
-Cesare Pavese
The Beautiful Summer
If you keep shining the neon light of analysis and accountability on the tender tissue of your belonging, you make it parched and barren.”
-John O’Donohue
Anam Ċara
He has rejected a great many books that he liked before the War, as well as a great many trends in painting or music, because they have not stood the test of experience. The work of human thought should withstand the test of brutal, naked reality. If it cannot, it is worthless. Probably only those things are worth while which can preserve their validity in the eyes of man threatened with instant death.”
-Czeslaw Milosz
The Captive Mind
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