"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? …All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
--Abraham Lincoln
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
I spoke with Sylvia Plath today...
And she said that there was a way for men to live without books and college. She was utterly content with her present situation, alone and ineffably warm, her body as quiet as the still air that undoubtedly dampened the room, a glass of milk sat beside her idly, as if quietly contemplating the room and thus becoming part of it in the process for a milk has no thoughts and could never be a cloud of thoughts as we are. Her eyes viscous and racing as her fingers mingled with the fresh scent of the strawberry runners she had planted just hours before setting herself down a spell to write, to think. She said that those are the times she'd call herself a fool to ask for more, I suggest that perhaps she has found eternal life. An eternity, because without books one might soon run out of words, and then one is left only to one's own thoughts, without words one is left to the illimitable production of thoughts. Without a means to make corpses of them, to bury them steadily on paper they expand infinitely like a cancer, and that is the eternal life of man, a universe of life contained in the cloud of being, a remorseless cancer, unending life.
Wicked and sentimental.
I no longer feel like explaining myself to anyone. Why do you want to know? Why can't you be quiet? Have some quotes while I regain my composure. I've never been a man of virtue, I trample and spit all over them and if I could I would break every finger on their bony, rotten hands. Virtue stretches its hands and tries to embrace humanity and there is no hope for her or her stupid fingers, her ugly smile, her crooked eyes and wrinkly cheeks, I hope she rots.
Quotes, quotes, quotes, I forgot:
"I heard exactly the same thing, a long time ago to be sure, from a doctor," the elder remarked. "He was then an old man, and unquestionably intelligent. He spoke just as frankly as you, humorously, but with a sorrowful humor. 'I love mankind,' he said, 'but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. In my dreams,' he said, 'I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days, this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: one because he takes too long eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose. I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me,' he said. 'On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole.'"
-Elder Zosima
"During a walk, he sat down on a hillock and thought: 'For six years I slept, and then one fine day I came out of my cocoon.' He was animated and looked affably around the countryside. 'I'm built for action,' he thought. But in an instant his thought of glory faded. He whispered, 'Let them wait a while and they'll see what I'm worth.' He had spoken with force but the words rolled on his lips like empty shells. 'What's the matter with me?' He did not want to recognize this odd inquietude, it had hurt him too much before. He thought, 'It's this silence. . . this land . . .' Not a living being, save crickets laboriously dragging their black and yellow bellies in the dust. Lucien hated crickets because they always looked half dead. On the other side of the road, a greyish stretch of land, crushed, creviced, ran as far as the river. No one saw Lucien, no one heard him; he sprang to his feet and felt that his movements would meet with no resistance, not even that of gravity. Now he stood beneath a curtain of grey clouds; it was as though he existed in a vacuum. 'This silence . . .' he thought. It was more than silence, it was nothingness. The countryside was extraordinarily calm and soft about Lucien, inhuman: it seemed that it was making itself tiny and was holding its breath so as not to disturb him. 'Quand l'artilleur de Metz revint en garnison....' The sound died on his lips as a flame in a vacuum: Lucien was alone, without a shadow and without echo, in the midst of this too discreet nature which meant nothing."
-Sartre, The Wall
"A step lower and the strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is 'dense,' sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millennia. For a second we cease to understand it because for centuries we have understood in it solely the images and designs that we had attributed to it beforehand, because henceforth we lack the power to make use of that artifice. The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes again what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us. Just as there are days when under the familiar face of a woman, we see as a stranger her we had love months or years ago, perhaps we shall come even close to desire what suddenly leaves us so alone."
-Camus, Myth of Sisyphus
Quotes, quotes, quotes, I forgot:
"I heard exactly the same thing, a long time ago to be sure, from a doctor," the elder remarked. "He was then an old man, and unquestionably intelligent. He spoke just as frankly as you, humorously, but with a sorrowful humor. 'I love mankind,' he said, 'but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, individually, as separate persons. In my dreams,' he said, 'I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and, it may be, would really have gone to the cross for people if it were somehow suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days, this I know from experience. As soon as someone is there, close to me, his personality oppresses my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: one because he takes too long eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose. I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me,' he said. 'On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hate people individually, the more ardent becomes my love for humanity as a whole.'"
-Elder Zosima
"During a walk, he sat down on a hillock and thought: 'For six years I slept, and then one fine day I came out of my cocoon.' He was animated and looked affably around the countryside. 'I'm built for action,' he thought. But in an instant his thought of glory faded. He whispered, 'Let them wait a while and they'll see what I'm worth.' He had spoken with force but the words rolled on his lips like empty shells. 'What's the matter with me?' He did not want to recognize this odd inquietude, it had hurt him too much before. He thought, 'It's this silence. . . this land . . .' Not a living being, save crickets laboriously dragging their black and yellow bellies in the dust. Lucien hated crickets because they always looked half dead. On the other side of the road, a greyish stretch of land, crushed, creviced, ran as far as the river. No one saw Lucien, no one heard him; he sprang to his feet and felt that his movements would meet with no resistance, not even that of gravity. Now he stood beneath a curtain of grey clouds; it was as though he existed in a vacuum. 'This silence . . .' he thought. It was more than silence, it was nothingness. The countryside was extraordinarily calm and soft about Lucien, inhuman: it seemed that it was making itself tiny and was holding its breath so as not to disturb him. 'Quand l'artilleur de Metz revint en garnison....' The sound died on his lips as a flame in a vacuum: Lucien was alone, without a shadow and without echo, in the midst of this too discreet nature which meant nothing."
-Sartre, The Wall
"A step lower and the strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is 'dense,' sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millennia. For a second we cease to understand it because for centuries we have understood in it solely the images and designs that we had attributed to it beforehand, because henceforth we lack the power to make use of that artifice. The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes again what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us. Just as there are days when under the familiar face of a woman, we see as a stranger her we had love months or years ago, perhaps we shall come even close to desire what suddenly leaves us so alone."
-Camus, Myth of Sisyphus
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