Quote of the day

[attofishpi]

Wanderer, there is no path, the path is made by walking.

[promethean75]

"g'head, I dare u. I triple dog dare u" - Iran

[attofishpi]

"g'head, I dare u. I triple dog dare u" - Iran

WELL THEN, KICK MY FEET OFF THE GROUND AND EMBRACE THE SKY.

[iambiguous]

Edith Wharton from The Age of Innocence

Beauty was a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.

Of course, some things never change.

It was thus, Archer reflected, that New York managed its transitions; conspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all good faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.

Of course, some things never change.

There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry - architecture being the least banal derivative of the latter.

Let's run that by Howard Roark.

...his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

Next up: your marriage.

Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to.

Next up: the equivalent of that here.

She was the subject creature, and versed in the arts of the enslaved.

Not that she actually knew that.

[iambiguous]

Alice Walker from The Color Purple

You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can't do it for you. You got to fight them for yourself.
I don't say nothing. I think bout Nettie, dead. She fight, she run away. What good it do? I don't fight, I stay where I'm told. But I'm alive.

Talk about "the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty." With life and death itself on the line.

I can't fix my mouth to say how I feel.

Or here how you think?

Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin.

Imagine that?

She look like she ain't long for this world but dressed well for the next.

Why take chances, right?

There is so much we don’t understand. And so much unhappiness comes because of that.

And then the part here where some insist that others are obligated to understand only what they do. Lots of unhappiness then too.

The years have come and gone without a single word from you. Only the sky above us do we hold in common. I look at it often as if, somehow, reflected from its immensities, I will one day find myself gazing into your eyes.

https://youtu.be/9tL03oQzkmw?si=bRg2RrP63eup2077

[iambiguous]

Nihilism...

“Do you know why the world is moving? Or why things are the way they are? It’s because the vast majority of people don’t ask themselves one simple question. ‘And then what?’ I want to crack this exam. ‘And then what?’ I want to elope with her. ‘And then what?’ I want that luxury car. ‘And then what?’ I want to be famous. ‘And then what?’ Do you understand what I want to expound? We all progress, taking one step at a time. We all progress with one goal under consideration. But no matter how many steps we take, there still remains a deep yearning for something that we can’t explain. A nihilist knows that it is a vicious circle. A nihilist knows that it is all ‘pointless.’ But thank God, nihilists don’t rule this world. And thank God, nor do the spiritualists. Else the whole world would be asking, ‘And then what?" Abhaidev

Now what?

“Nature constantly gushes out of its womb a vast array of species only to survive, suffer, multiply; and, by virtue of death, to be returned whence they came. We are but one of many of its playthings with which it likes to play a Darwinian game called "create, torture, destroy, and repeat.” Selim Güre

And then what?

“Exit God, exit religion, exit divine purpose; enter cosmic insignificance, enter universal purposelessness, enter ever-fleeting pleasures and ever-present suffering—life does indeed seem very bleak. No myths, no prophecies, nothing to console the thinking individual. What's left is a heartless, cosmic meat-grinder that is perfectly indifferent to its inhabitants. Without the 'vital lies' we tell ourselves, our lives are utterly useless.” Selim Güre

Being optimistic?

“To say human life had no meaning was the easy part. But Hanio was struck all over again by the huge amount of energy required to live a life filled with so much meaninglessness.” Yukio Mishima

Meaning what, right?

“How many times, by God’s bloody p****, have I longed to be able to detonate planets, to destroy the sun itself, to pluck it from the universe and crash it into the earth, annihilating all Creation and replacing it with a lightless void of violence. Ah, that would be a crime! A cosmic crime, dwarfing the petty misdemeanours we are committing here, limited as we are to snuffing out a few meaningless souls.” Marquis de Sade

Smirk if you agree.

“There is no purpose to life, you are here to achieve nothing. Whatever you feel is your supreme goal in life is a fiction created by you and the society you are living in, just to keep yourself busy in this purposeless creation. You are born to die, everything else is pure nonsense.” Anupam S Shlok

How's that working out for you?

[iambiguous]

God...

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.” C.S. Lewis

God's glory? Pick one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” Soren Kierkegaard

Let's run that by folks in Gaza and Israel.

“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC” Kurt Vonnegut

Amen?

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.” Christopher Hitchens

Now that's clever.
Right, God?

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” Dorothy Parker

Now that's clever.
Right, God?

“I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.” John Lennon

On the other hand, what does he believe now?

[iambiguous]

Existentialism...

“Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.” Kurt Vonnegut

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of moments of course.

“I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.” Umberto Eco

I believe that too. Objectivism I call it, remember?

“The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.” Anton Chekhov

He means the is/ought world of course. All the rest of it might actually be real.

“There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” David M. Eagleman

Or four if you count the last time you post here.

“Life has no meaning a priori. It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.” Jean-Paul Sartre

So, try again, Mr. Pinhead.

“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?" Christopher Hitchens

Wow, who does he remind you of? Here, I mean.

[Impenitent]

I wish I was in Tijuana
Eating barbeque iguana... - Wall of Voodoo

-Imp

[iambiguous]

Émile Cioran from The New Gods

Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.

And certainly the equivalent of that here.

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

Cue the Grim Reaper.
Let him decide for you.

Our power resides in our incapacity to know how alone we are.

My guess: some a hell of a lot more than others.

We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves.

Let's pin that down now.

What place do we occupy in the "universe"? A point, if that! Why reproach ourselves when we are evidently so insignificant? Once we make this observation, we grow calm at once: henceforth, no more bother, no more frenzy, metaphysical or otherwise. And then that point dilates, swells, substitutes itself for space. And everything begins all over again.

With each new thread for some.

Chatter: any conversation with someone who has not suffered.

A new board perhaps?

[iambiguous]

Thomas Pynchon from The Crying of Lot 49

I came, she said, hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy.
Cherish it! cried Hilarious, fiercely. What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.

Uh, tell me about it?

Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?

Any captive maidens here? Well, not counting her of course.

Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a letter, another lover.

Her soul, perhaps?

Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you.

Or here when nobody around has any philosophical relevance to you.

This is America, you live in it, you let it happen. Let it unfurl.

After all the bills are paid of course.

You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world’s intrusion into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there’s cataclysm.

What, even here?!

[iambiguous]

Anthony Doerr from All the Light We Cannot See

I am only alive because I have not yet died.

Not many that isn't applicable to.

Doing nothing is as good as collaborating.

Their collaborators, of course, not ours.

Radio: it ties a million ears to a single mouth.

Well, at least Rush is dead and gone.

War is a bazaar where lives are traded like any other commodity: chocolate or bullets or parachute silk.

And so many of them! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_wars

Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution.

How's that working out for you? Here for example.

If only life were like a Jules Verne novel, thinks Marie-Laure, and you could page ahead when you most needed to, and learn what would happen.

He means a John Fowles novel, of course.

[iambiguous]

Adam Johnson from The Orphan Master's Son

But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done.

Don't you just hate that?

Where we are from...stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.

Just to see what happens, let's start being factual here.
You first.

Today, tomorrow, she said. A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten thousand matches before it have gone out.

Next up: the day you die.

Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past.

Or, sure, stick to flipping coins.

In communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

Especially around election time. Citizens United we call it here. At least until the workers of the world unite. Then, with Communism, we'll see. Unless, of course, North Korea counts.

She's read every word I've written, he said. That's the truest way to know someone's heart.

Just out of curiosity, anyone read every word I've written here?

[iambiguous]

John Fowles from The French Lieutenants Woman

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Next up: we all write philosophy.
And entirely in worlds of words as likely as not.

There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive.

Next up: there are some women...

I am infinitely strange to myself.

My guess: you're not?

You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it...fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf - your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in the flight from the real reality. That is the basic definition of Homo sapiens.

And, here, up in the clouds to boot.

They looked down on her; and she looked up through them.

And, sure, sometimes that's enough. Though, surer still, sometimes it isn't.

His statement to himself should have been 'I possess this now, therefore I am happy' , instead of what it so Victorianly was: 'I cannot possess this forever, therefore I am sad'.

On the other hand, possess what?

[iambiguous]

Suicide...

“Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die.” Cormac McCarthy

Curse God, maybe, but which one?

“'I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.' He shakes his head. 'And there was more. I just couldn't see it.'” Patrick Ness

Bummer.

“God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me, among the rest.” Charlotte Brontë

You know, if there is a God. And, miraculously, it's your God.

“The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning:
The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.
The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.” Walker Percy

Trust me: it's no where near that simple.

“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself, but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.” Antonin Artaud

Cue the determinists?

“Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.” Lynda Barry

Of course, drugs aside, she's still around.