Options
We were walking, holding hands
With our bare feet in the sand
And the seagulls overhead
When I broke the spell and said
I could never divorce you
Without a good reason
And though I may never have to
It's good to have options
But for now
I need you
But it was only in my head
Because no one ever says
What they really mean to say
When there's so much at stake
So I told her I loved her
She told me she loved me
And I mostly believed her
And she mostly believed me
Kostoglotov leaves the zoo, and after wandering around town decides against going to see Zoya or Vera. He does find the courage to go to Vera's once, but he has left it so late in the day that she is no longer there, and he decides not to try again. He is well aware that the hormone therapy used as part of his cancer treatment may have left him impotent, just as imprisonment and exile have taken all the life out of him. He feels he has nothing left to offer a woman, and that his past means he would always feel out of place in what he sees as normal life. Instead, he decides to accept less from life than he had hoped for, and to face it alone. He heads to the railway station to fight his way onto a train to Ush-Terek, the distant village to which he had been exiled and where he has friends. He writes a goodbye letter to Vera from the station:
You may disagree, but I have a prediction to make: even before you drift into the indifference of old age, you will come to bless this day, the day you did not commit yourself to share my life ... Now that I am going away ... I can tell you quite frankly: even when we were having the most intellectual conversations and I honestly thought and believed everything I said, I still wanted all the time, all the time, to pick you up and kiss you on the lips.
So try to work that out.
And now, without your permission, I kiss them.
"if we do not adapt by modifying our attitudes and expectations, our minds and bodies will suffer"
Is that from here?: https://books.google.com/books?id=t7...119&lpg=PA119&Originally Posted by wasp
I like this quote: "The greatest stressor most people experience daily is change" - Si vs. Ne.
"A majority of people are well-meaning, but details get fudged, enthusiasm fades, memory is poor, interpretations are different, judgments get clouded, and external circumstances intervene. Hence, the counsel of the humorist Finley Peter Dunne -- Trust everybody, but cut the cards."
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall
Kim Addonizio
If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to a man you loved opened
them for one you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
WHY ARE YOU LONELY: A TEXT GAME - Mallory Ortberg
WHY ARE YOU LONELY: CHOOSE ONE
FAILED TO NURTURE RELATIONSHIPS BORN OUT OF CONVENIENCE ONCE CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES REQUIRED ACTIVE PARTICIPATION FROM YOU
WATCHED NETFLIX FOR SEVEN HOURS INSTEAD OF SLEEPING BECAUSE YOU HAVE ONCE AGAIN MISTAKEN INERTIA FOR REST
CONFUSED “SELF-CARE” WITH “SELF-INDULGENCE” AGAIN; YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF EXPERIENCING GENUINE REFRESHMENT OR RESTORATION BUT YOU DO SPEND A LOT OF MONEY AT NAIL SALONS
ONCE AGAIN CONFUSED “EMPATHY” FOR “TAKING RESPONSIBILITY” AND INVITED OTHERS TO UNLOAD THEIR EMOTIONAL BURDENS ON YOU WITHOUT FIRST ENSURING RECIPROCITY, WHOOPS
ANTICIPATORILY BLAMED OTHER PEOPLE FOR NOT CALLING YOU WITHOUT ONCE ASKING YOURSELF WHY YOU CAN’T CALL THEM
ASSUMING ANY TIME SPENT TOGETHER THAT YOU HAD TO INITIATE IS SOMEHOW LESS AUTHENTIC THAN REQUESTS FOR TIME SPENT TOGETHER THAT YOU ACCEPT
BELIEVE “PERIODICALLY EXPERIENCING THE HUMAN CONDITION” MEANS SOMETHING IS FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN WITHIN YOU
CONSTANTLY LIE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS THEN WONDER WHY YOU FEEL LIKE NO ONE KNOWS YOU
MISTAKENLY BELIEVE THAT NEGATIVE FEELINGS MUST BE MISTAKES EITHER TO BE AVOIDED OR FIXED RATHER THAN EXPERIENCED
DESIRE TO BE FULLY UNDERSTOOD WITHOUT THE CONCOMITANT WILLINGNESS TO FULLY EXPLAIN YOURSELF
BELIEVE TRYING AT SOMETHING A LITTLE BIT SHOULD RESULT IN INSTANT PERFECTION AND FIND YOURSELF HORRIFIED AND ASHAMED OF MAKING REALISTIC PROGRESS
TRY COCONUT OIL
CONVINCED THAT HONESTLY ADMITTING YOUR PROBLEMS WILL DRIVE PEOPLE AWAY BECAUSE NO ONE LIKES COMPLAINING SO INSTEAD YOU OFFER EVERYONE A PISS-POOR SIMULACRUM OF BEING EASY-GOING
STILL JUST WAITING FOR THINGS TO HAPPEN TO YOU INSTEAD OF EXPRESSING YOUR DESIRES ALOUD
THINK YOU’RE BEING PLAYFUL BUT ACTUALLY YOU JUST GET MEAN WHEN YOU DRINK
SPEND ALL YOUR TIME SAYING THINGS LIKE “EITHER’S GOOD” OR “DOESN’T MATTER TO ME” WHEN IN FACT ONLY ONE THING IS GOOD AND IT DOES MATTER TO YOU BUT YOU THINK “NOT EXPRESSING A PREFERENCE” IS THE BEST PERSONALITY TRAIT YOU HAVE TO OFFER OTHERS
PEOPLE ACTUALLY MORE AWARE OF YOUR BARELY-CONCEALED CONTEMPT FOR THEIR CHOICES AND RELATIONSHIPS THAN YOU THINK THEY ARE
NO GOOD REASON, SORRY
"Nobody completes anybody. That’s not a real thing. If you’re lucky enough to find someone you can halfway tolerate, you sink your nails in and don’t let go no matter what.
"Settle. Because otherwise you’re just gonna get older and harder, and more alone. And you’re gonna do everything you can to fill that hole, with friends, and your career, and meaningless sex, but the hole doesn’t get filled. One day, you’re gonna look around and you’re going to realize that everybody loves you, but nobody likes you. And that is the loneliest feeling in the world."
He was really looking for something (and at some level, knew what it was). It's too bad he didn't have the strength to keep going and find it.
I believe he's found what he was looking for -(
love letter from Wilfred Owen to Siegfried Sassoon 11/5/17
"Finally, in a low whisper, he said, ‘I think I might be a terrible person.’ For a split second I believed him - I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing."
- Miranda July, The First Bad Man
“Some part of life — perhaps the most important part — must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.”
— Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society
Jesus wept.
Frank Cotton, Hellraiser
The Horseman and Lake Constance
THE HORSEMAN rides in the valley’s glow,The sunbeam glistens on fields of snow, The sweat-drop falls as he speeds to gain The lake of Constance ere day doth wane, To pass with his steed in the ferry o’er, 5 And land ere night on the further shore. On rugged path, with mettlesome steed, O’er brambles and stones he gains the mead. The mountains quitted he sees the land Extend like a snow-white sheet of sand, 10 Behind him town and hamlet wane, And smooth is the path of the level plain. Not a hill around, not a house he sees, The rocks have vanished, no shrubs nor trees; A league hath he won, a second, a third, 15 Aloft is the cry of the solan-goose heard, The water-hen soars on rustling wing, No other sounds through the stillness ring; No wanderer can his eye behold To point out the path his steps should hold. 20 On, on, as on velvet, o’er yielding snow! “O, when will the murmuring waters glow?” The day hath waned, through the gloom of night In the distance glimmers a taper’s light. Mid the fog peers tree upon tree anew, 25 Dark mountains limit the distant view. Again over stone and thorn he rides, Then digs his spurs in the horse’s sides, The dogs at the steed and his rider bay, The village hearth glows with inviting ray. 30 “O, welcome, fair maid, at the window; say, To the lake, to the lake, how far, I pray?” The maiden gazed with wondering eye, “Both ferry and lake behind thee lie. And were it not bound by its icy crust, 35 I should say thou hadst quitted the boat but just.” The stranger shuddered in dread suspense, “Yon plain behind, I have ridden thence!” The maiden uplifted her arms and spake, “Great God! thou hast ridden across the lake: 40 The hoofs of thy steed have knocked at the grave, In the gulf of death, the fathomless wave; Did the billows beneath thee not vent their wrath? Broke not with a crash thy icy path? Thou wert not the prey of the silent brood, 45 Of the ravenous pike, in the chilly flood?” She calls forth the village the tale to hear, The gathering groups of boys draw near; The dames and the sires crowd round the spot: “Rejoice, O fortunate man, at thy lot! 50 Come in to the stove, to the steaming dish, Break bread at our board and eat of our fish!” The rider transfixed upon his steed, Unto the first word alone gave heed. His heart stood still, and on end his hair, 55 The horrors behind him still grimly stare; His eye sees naught but the gulf profound, His mind sinks down to the deep, deep ground; Like rending ice in his ear it roars, From his brow in torrents the cold sweat pours. 60 He sighs, falls from his steed to the ground; A grave on the shore of the lake he found.
Gustav Schwab
"The first to help you up is the person who knows how it feels to fall down." - unknown
“There are no happy endings.
Endings are the saddest part,
So just give me a happy middle
And a very happy start.”
Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places; and this counsel counselleth he to his enemies, and to whatever spitteth and speweth: "Take care not to spit AGAINST the wind!"
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old time, and regulate the sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his follow'rs trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!"
An Essay on Man: Epistle II
BY ALEXANDER POPE
“My typology is . . . not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.” —C.G. Jung
I stood where my life’s slopes had reached their summit,
Where watercourses strain and would untwine
And with their foaming wave would downwards plummet;
There it was clear, and standing there was fine.
I gazed towards the sun and all its planets
Which, after setting, in the sky did shine;
I looked down at the earth, so green and fair,
And God was good and man was honest there.
An evil spleen-filled elf appeared, who merely
Bit without warning deep into my heart;
Lo, all at once the world was void and dreary,
And sun and stars quite suddenly went dark;
My once gay landscape lay autumnal, weary,
Each grove grew dun, each flower stem broke apart,
All vigour died within my frozen mind,
All joy, all courage shrivelled up and pined.
What’s it to me, reality’s dead matter,
So dull, oppressive and so coarsely raw?
How hope’s once rosy hue has, ah, grown flatter!
How memory once blue, ah, clouded o’er!
And poetry itself! Its idle patter,
Its tight-rope saltos I would have no more.
Its vain illusions none can satisfy,
But skimmed from surfaces of things nearby.
For you, mankind, I should be praises saying,
You in God’s image made, how apt, how true!
Two lies though you are guilty of displaying,
Woman is one and, by her, man makes two.
Of faith and honour the old song needs praying,
Best sung when we deception would pursue.
You heaven’s child! What’s true, I would maintain,
Is, branded on your brow, the mark of Cain!
So legible a mark, writ by God’s finger,
Why did I fail to notice such a sign?
Through human life a corpse-like stench does linger
Which poisons spring’s air, summer’s pomp maligns.
That smell comes from the grave and seeks to injure;
Graves are walled up, by marble guarded fine.
Alas, though, foul decay is on life’s breath,
No guard shuts out its constant reek of death.
Tell me, you watchman, how the night progresses!
Is it unceasing, will it never end?
The moon, half-eaten, through the sky’s still presses,
The tearful stars still through the heavens wend.
My pulse beats fast as in my youth’s successes,
Hours of affliction though it cannot mend.
Each pulse beat’s pain, how endless and how raw!
Oh, my poor heart, devoured and bleeding sore!
My heart? Within my breast I none discover,
’Tis but an urn wherein life’s ashes lie.
Show pity on me, Hertha, you green mother,
Oh, let that urn be buried by and by;
In air earth’s pain erodes but still will smother,
In earth, though, surely it must cease its cry,
Perhaps time’s orphan, when earth’s school is done,
Will see its father – far beyond the sun.
After Twenty Years, Adrienne Rich
Two women sit at a table by a window. Light breaks
unevenly on both of them.
Their talk is a striking of sparks
which passers-by in the street observe
as a glitter in the glass of that window.
Two women in the prime of life.
Their babies are old enough to have babies.
Loneliness has been part of their history for twenty years,
the dark edge of the clever tongue,
the obscure underside of the imagination.
It is snow and thunder in the street.
While they speak the lightning flashes purple.
It is strange to be so many women,
eating and drinking at the same table,
those who bathed their children in the same basin
who kept their secrets from each other
walked the floors of their lives in separate rooms
and flow into history now as the woman of their time
living in the prime of life
as in a city where nothing is forbidden
and nothing permanent.
The Patriarchs disappoint us. They do not see, and they do not listen. They are often blind and deaf to women, and they strut and boast and act as if we are not there. And they are not always men. They are sometimes women, too, blind to themselves, hating themselves. They are all caught up in the perceptual habits of centuries, in expectations that have come to rule their minds. And these habits are worst for the young woman, who is still thought of as a desirable sexual object because the young, desirable, fertile body cannot be truly serious, cannot be the body behind great art. A young man’s body, on the other hand, the body of Jackson Pollock, is made for greatness. Art hero.
-Siri Hustvedt on Louise Bourgeois
"Spiritual materialism is rampant and a life filled with spirit is a rarity. I don't care how many crystals you have, how vegan your food is, or whether your Venus is in Jupiter since the last time you blamed your problems on the moon. If the way we carry and express ourselves condemns others while lifting ourselves, then we're as off target as the people we're condemning. I drink with the thinkers and smoke with the preachers and I've never met a good man that believed he has the answers. Let your personality be your greatest work of art, and let your actions weave a thread of unity. Laugh at the voice(s) in your head, befriend your ego before you listen to that bullshit that tells you to destroy it. That's McDonalds spirituality - even attempting to get rid of ego means you want to avoid this and move towards that - creating more of the same inner conflict you're trying to avoid. Inner silence and enviable peace doesn't come from the avoidance of life as it is, it comes from moving as deeply into life as you can. The only way out is in, and the only way beyond is through." - Bryan Elli
“My typology is . . . not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.” —C.G. Jung
"Spiritual materialism is rampant and a life filled with spirit is a rarity. I don't care how many crystals you have, how vegan your food is, or whether your Venus is in Jupiter since the last time you blamed your problems on the moon. If the way we carry and express ourselves condemns others while lifting ourselves, then we're as off target as the people we're condemning. I drink with the thinkers and smoke with the preachers and I've never met a good man that believed he has the answers. Let your personality be your greatest work of art, and let your actions weave a thread of unity. Laugh at the voice(s) in your head, befriend your ego before you listen to that bullshit that tells you to destroy it. That's McDonalds spirituality - even attempting to get rid of ego means you want to avoid this and move towards that - creating more of the same inner conflict you're trying to avoid. Inner silence and enviable peace doesn't come from the avoidance of life as it is, it comes from moving as deeply into life as you can. The only way out is in, and the only way beyond is through." - Bryan Elli
Damn. This is real in the gangsta rap and the existential way; this part "befriend your ego before you listen to that bullshit that tells you to destroy it" I think is especially true, the only way to really end a conflict is with unity, starting with oneself - and that doesn't come from fighting something.
I'm not getting a whole lot out of Jordan Peterson's 12 rules yet, but I do want to remember this particular phrase which touches on something I struggle with:
"Faith is not the childish belief in magic. That is ignorance or even willful blindness. It is instead the realization that the tragic irrationalities of life must be counterbalanced by an equally irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being."
"We always had great joy in the gymnasium"
-Arnold Schwarzenegger
The decisive thing is not the reality of the object, but the reality of the subjective factor, i.e. the primordial images, which in their totality represent a psychic mirror-world. It is a mirror, however, with the peculiar capacity of representing the present contents of consciousness not in their known and customary form but in a certain sense sub specie aeternitatis, somewhat as a million-year old consciousness might see them.
(Jung on Si)
“I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty five days a year, I was still in elementary school at the time - fifth or sixth grade - but I made up my mind once and for all.”
“Wow,” I said. “Did the search pay off?”
“That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”
“Waiting for the perfect love?”
“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”
“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.
“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”
“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”
“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?”
“So then what?”
“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”
“Sounds crazy to me.”
“Well, to me, that’s what love is…”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Percy Bysshe Shelly, Ozymandias
"When people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small, but barely anyone in the present really thinks that they can radically change the future by doing something small."
yeah thats because the future hasn't happened yet. I think the idea is people don't want to upset something that already had life, because its messing with the status quo. whereas from the point of view of the present the conservatism toward the future is not the same because you don't know how its going to turn out (it is not yet "live" so it loses nothing via mistakes or increased effort). also it cuts both ways. if you start worrying about radically changing the future on the basis of something small it means your mistakes are likewise amplified and require equal consideration (i.e.: its entirely possible one wrong move could snowball into something really bad)
in short that is the most ESE quote I've ever heard, because its got both implicit naive optimism and total uniqueness of perspective toward time, namely a really low res and ill considered one. im not saying this to be a douche, I'm saying it to illustrate a point.
if the real point of the quote is to appreciate how much a positive and far reaching, yet somewhat unknown and mysterious, effect your actions can have on the lives of others (a very vortical point of view).. Yes, that is super true and worth keeping in mind. in that sense one's actions have a lot of meaning. it reads like a Ne slogan to replace Ni in supplying meaning
That's just your opinion dude - The dude
“She didn't quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
“My typology is . . . not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.” —C.G. Jung
“Look here, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “Is it possible that all this time thou hast been going about with me thou hast never found out that all things belonging to knights-errant seem to be illusions and nonsense and ravings, and to go always by contraries? And not because it really is so, but because there is always a swarm of enchanters in attendance upon us that change and alter everything with us, and turn things as they please, and according as they are disposed to aid or destroy us; thus what seems to thee a barber’s basin seems to me Mambrino’s helmet, and to another it will seem something else; and rare foresight it was in the sage who is on my side to make what is really and truly Mambrine’s helmet seem a basin to everybody, for, being held in such estimation as it is, all the world would pursue me to rob me of it; but when they see it is only a barber’s basin they do not take the trouble to obtain it; as was plainly shown by him who tried to break it, and left it on the ground without taking it, for, by my faith, had he known it he would never have left it behind."
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
“Oh!” said the priest, “young girl, have pity upon me! You think yourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is. Oh! to love a woman! to be a priest! to be hated! to love with all the fury of one’s soul; to feel that one would give for the least of her smiles, one’s blood, one’s vitals, one’s fame, one’s salvation, one’s immortality and eternity, this life and the other; to regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, God, in order that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet; to clasp her night and day in one’s dreams and one’s thoughts, and to behold her in love with the trappings of a soldier and to have nothing to offer her but a priest’s dirty cassock, which will inspire her with fear and disgust! To be present with one’s jealousy and one’s rage, while she lavishes on a miserable, blustering imbecile, treasures of love and beauty! To behold that body whose form burns you, that bosom which possesses so much sweetness, that flesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of another! Oh heaven! to love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to think of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one writhes for whole nights together on the pavement of one’s cell, and to behold all those caresses which one has dreamed of, end in torture! To have succeeded only in stretching her upon the leather bed! Oh! these are the veritable pincers, reddened in the fires of hell. Oh! blessed is he who is sawn between two planks, or torn in pieces by four horses! Do you know what that torture is, which is imposed upon you for long nights by your burning arteries, your bursting heart, your breaking head, your teeth-knawed hands; mad tormentors which turn you incessantly, as upon a red-hot gridiron, to a thought of love, of jealousy, and of despair! Young girl, mercy! a truce for a moment! a few ashes on these live coals! Wipe away, I beseech you, the perspiration which trickles in great drops from my brow! Child! torture me with one hand, but caress me with the other! Have pity, young girl! Have pity upon me!”
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
“My typology is . . . not in any sense to stick labels on people at first sight. It is not a physiognomy and not an anthropological system, but a critical psychology dealing with the organization and delimitation of psychic processes that can be shown to be typical.” —C.G. Jung
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