"He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others—the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the mid afternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad."
— everything is illuminated (via theartofhiding)
(via libraryland)
"I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day."
— Jean-Paul Sartre (via notnina)
(Source: our-lives-as-losers, via notnina)
"I do not wish you much happiness—it will bore you. I do not wish you trouble either, but, following the philosophy of the peasant, I will repeat simply, “live more” and try not to be much bored."
—
Dostoevsky, Demons (via liberumarbitriumindifferentiae)
- Funny. Overcome with boredom, not quite discontent, this morning. Above quote/s mirroring that…
(Source: supernovasyntax, via rudysnotes)
"The girl looked at the bead curtain. “They’ve painted something on it,”
she said. “What does it say?”
“Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”
“Could we try it?”
The man called “Listen” through the curtain. The woman came out
from the bar.
“Four reales.”
“We want two Anis del Toro.”
“With water?”
“Do you want it with water?”
” I don’t know,” the girl said. “Is it good with water?”
“It’s all right.”
“You want them with water?” asked the woman.
“Yes, with water.”
” I t tastes like licorice,” the girl said and put the glass down.
“That’s the way with everything.”
“Yes,” said the girl. “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the
things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”
“Oh, cut it out.”
“You started it,” the girl said. ” I was being amused. I was having a fine
time.”
“Well, let’s try and have a fine time.”
“All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants.
Wasn’t that bright?”
“That was bright.”
” I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it—look at things
and try new drinks?”
” I guess so.”
The girl looked across at the hills."
—
Excerpt from a cute short story: ‘Hills Like White Elephants’ by Ernest Hemingway
See: http://www.hamiltoncps.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Hills-Like-White-Elephant-Story.pdf
"Friedrich Nietzsche defined ‘comical’ as transformation from present anxiety to a short moment of high spirits."
catacombes:
“In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.”
— Franz Kafka, Letter to Milena Jesenská
(via planb-becomeapirate)
"Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time."
— John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday (1954)
"
Or Oreo, or
worse. Or ordinary.
Or your choice
of category
or
Color
or any color
other than Colored
or Colored Only.
Or “Of Color”
or
Other
or theory or discourse
or oral territory.
Oregon or Georgia
or Florida Zora
or
Opportunity
or born poor
or Corporate. Or Moor.
Or a Noir Orpheus
or Senghor
or
Diaspora
or a horrendous
and tore-up journey.
Or performance. Or allegory’s armor
of ignorant comfort.
or
Worship
or reform or a sore chorus.
Or Electoral Corruption
or important ports
of Yoruba or worry
or
Neighbor
or fear of…
of terror or border.
Or all organized
minorities.
"
—
‘Or’, Thomas Sayers Ellis
The poem is based on the repetition of or, but as we read through it, what seemed like a formal constraint becomes a principle of transformation, a hinge that keeps flexing. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/01/12/or/
