"Into the stillness come the voices of his masters, echoing from one side of his head while memory speaks from the other. Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."
"This, she realizes, is the basis of his fear, all fear. That a light you
are powerless to stop will turn on you and usher a bullet to its mark."
"For Werner, doubts turn up regularly. Racial purity, political
purity—Bastian speaks to a horror of any sort of corruption, and yet,
Werner wonders in the dead of night, isn’t life a kind of corruption? A
child is born, and the world sets in upon it. Taking things from it,
stuffing things into it. Each bite of food, each particle of light
entering the eye—the body can never be pure. But this is what the
commandant insists upon, why the Reich measures their noses, clocks
their hair color. The entropy of a closed system never decreases."
"What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic
spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so
really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible."
"The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children, says the
voice. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light.
And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims
with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives
without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?"
"'Your problem, Werner,' says Frederick, 'is that you still believe you own your life.'"
"The very life of any creature is a quick-fading spark in fathomless darkness."
"Don’t you want to be alive before you die?"
-- Excerpts from All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
Friday, January 9, 2015
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they
all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to
experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship
they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take
the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind
of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm
going to blame John Cusack.
-- Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
-- Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
The Libertine, by Stephen Jeffreys
Allow me to be frank at the commencement. You will not like me. The
gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not
like me now and you will like me a good deal less as we go on. Ladies,
an announcement: I am up for it, all the time. That is not a boast or an
opinion, it is bone hard medical fact. I put it round you know. And you
will watch me putting it round and sigh for it. Don't. It is a deal of
trouble for you and you are better off watching and drawing your
conclusions from a distance than you would be if I got my tarse up your
petticoats. Gentlemen. Do not despair, I am up for that as well. And the
same warning applies. Still your cheesy erections till I have had my
say. But later when you shag - and later you will shag, I shall expect
it of you and I will know if you have let me down - I wish you to shag
with my homuncular image rattling in your gonads. Feel how it was for
me, how it is for me and ponder. 'Was that shudder the same shudder he
sensed? Did he know something more profound? Or is there some wall of
wretchedness that we all batter with our heads at that shining, livelong
moment. That is it. That is my prologue, nothing in rhyme, no
protestations of modesty, you were not expecting that I hope. I am John
Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester and I do not want you to like me.
-- Opening line from The Libertine, by Stephen Jeffreys
-- Opening line from The Libertine, by Stephen Jeffreys
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Calling him back from layoff, Bill Hicok
I called a man today. After he said
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been
confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was
and it turns out I'm OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars
painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that's a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle
for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said
he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean
and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through
with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions
as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried
with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward
than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other
and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other
forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones
hear?
-- Bill Hicok, "Calling him back from layoff"
hello and I said hello came a pause
during which it would have been
confusing to say hello again so I said
how are you doing and guess what, he said
fine and wondered aloud how I was
and it turns out I'm OK. He
was on the couch watching cars
painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars
painted with ads for Tide around an oval
that's a metaphor for life because
most of us run out of gas and settle
for getting drunk in the stands
and shouting at someone in a t-shirt
we want kraut on our dog. I said
he could have his job back and during
the pause that followed his whiskers
scrubbed the mouthpiece clean
and his breath passed in and out
in the tidal fashion popular
with mammals until he broke through
with the words how soon thank you
ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove
through the wires on the backs of ions
as one long word as one hard prayer
of relief meant to be heard
by the sky. When he began to cry I tried
with the shape of my silence to say
I understood but each confession
of fear and poverty was more awkward
than what you learn in the shower.
After he hung up I went outside and sat
with one hand in the bower of the other
and thought if I turn my head to the left
it changes the song of the oriole
and if I give a job to one stomach other
forks are naked and if tonight a steak
sizzles in his kitchen do the seven
other people staring at their phones
hear?
-- Bill Hicok, "Calling him back from layoff"
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
"I have a very strong affinity for them. They're my parents, I mean, and
we're all part of each others' harmony and everything," Teddy said. "I
want them to have a nice time while they're alive, because they like
having a nice time... But they don't love me and Booper - that's my
sister - that way. I mean they don't seem able to love us just the way
we are. They don't seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us
a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as
they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good, that way."
Teddy from Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
Teddy from Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Being Mortal, Atul Gawande
"What more is it that we need in order to feel that life is worthwhile?
"The answer, he believed, is that we all seek a cause beyond ourselves. This was, for him, an intrinsic human need. The cause could be large (family, country, principle) or small (a building, project, the care of a pet). The important thing was that, in ascribing value to the cause and seeing it as worth making sacrifices for, we give lives meaning.
"Royce called this dedication to a cause beyond oneself loyalty. He regarded it as the opposite of individualism. The individualist puts self-interest first, seeing his own pain, pleasure, and existence as his greatest concern. For an individualist, loyalty to causes that have nothing to do with self-interest is strange When such loyalty encourages self-sacrifice, it can even be alarming -- a mistaken and irrational tendency that leaves people open to the exploitation of tyrants. Nothing could matter more than self-interest, and because when you die you are gone, self sacrifice makes no sense.
"Royce had no sympathy for the individualist view. 'The selfish we had always with us,' he wrote. 'But the divine right to be selfish was never more ingeniously defended.' In fact, he argued, human beings need loyalty. It does not necessarily produce happiness, and can even be painful, but we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it, we have only our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. They provide, ultimately, only torment. 'By nature, I am a sort of meeting place of countless streams of ancestral tendency. From moment to moment... I am a collection of impulses,' Royce observed. 'We cannot see the inner light. Let us try the outer one.'
"And we do. Consider the fact that we care deeply about what happens to the world after we die. If self-interest were the primary source of meaning in life, then it wouldn't matter to people if an hour after their death everyone they know were to be wiped from the face of the earth. Yet it matters greatly to most people. We feel that such an occurrence would make our lives meaningless." p. 126-7
"...those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives -- and they lived 25 percent longer. In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it." p.178
"In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves." p. 238
"We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?"
-- Atul Gawande, Being Mortal
"The answer, he believed, is that we all seek a cause beyond ourselves. This was, for him, an intrinsic human need. The cause could be large (family, country, principle) or small (a building, project, the care of a pet). The important thing was that, in ascribing value to the cause and seeing it as worth making sacrifices for, we give lives meaning.
"Royce called this dedication to a cause beyond oneself loyalty. He regarded it as the opposite of individualism. The individualist puts self-interest first, seeing his own pain, pleasure, and existence as his greatest concern. For an individualist, loyalty to causes that have nothing to do with self-interest is strange When such loyalty encourages self-sacrifice, it can even be alarming -- a mistaken and irrational tendency that leaves people open to the exploitation of tyrants. Nothing could matter more than self-interest, and because when you die you are gone, self sacrifice makes no sense.
"Royce had no sympathy for the individualist view. 'The selfish we had always with us,' he wrote. 'But the divine right to be selfish was never more ingeniously defended.' In fact, he argued, human beings need loyalty. It does not necessarily produce happiness, and can even be painful, but we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it, we have only our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. They provide, ultimately, only torment. 'By nature, I am a sort of meeting place of countless streams of ancestral tendency. From moment to moment... I am a collection of impulses,' Royce observed. 'We cannot see the inner light. Let us try the outer one.'
"And we do. Consider the fact that we care deeply about what happens to the world after we die. If self-interest were the primary source of meaning in life, then it wouldn't matter to people if an hour after their death everyone they know were to be wiped from the face of the earth. Yet it matters greatly to most people. We feel that such an occurrence would make our lives meaningless." p. 126-7
"...those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives -- and they lived 25 percent longer. In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it." p.178
"In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves." p. 238
"We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?"
-- Atul Gawande, Being Mortal
Thursday, January 1, 2015
The Aliens, Charles Bukowski
you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction or
distress.
they dress well, eat
well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they have moments of
grief
but all in all
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy
death, usually in their
sleep.
you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.
but i am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them.
but they
are there
and I am
here
-- Charles Bukowski, the Aliens
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction or
distress.
they dress well, eat
well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they have moments of
grief
but all in all
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy
death, usually in their
sleep.
you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.
but i am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them.
but they
are there
and I am
here
-- Charles Bukowski, the Aliens
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