Variations sans thème

Le rêve est une seconde vie.

[post-troy-stress-disorder]

i need to read everything ever before the end of the summer

[soracities]

Simone Weil, from First and Last Notebooks (trans. Richard Rees) [ID'd]

[acertainknot]

[T]he real source of our anxiety is not simply our future death but, above all, the possibility of our (present) non-reality and non-existence, the fact that it could be that we are not. […] This can explain to some extent why the prospect of our future (even if imminent) death seems less scary than the idea of our existence, our being as it is now, possibly constituting a scam – because it bears on our present (and past) reality rather than on our future reality. To paraphrase [Clément] Rosset: to perish in the future would at least confirm that we have lived. The anxiety relating to deception can be much more visceral.

Zupančič, A. (2024) Disavowal. Cambridge: Polity Press. pp. 20–21.

[ntrider]

is there any trait less attractive than a lack of curiosity

[sonofcainn]

Architecture and Nostalgia by Victor Delhez

[thirdity]

“You write the beginning and then you go back and rewrite the beginning, and you never got off page one. It’s kind of a syndrome, and I have a rash piece of advice which is — Go on, page two, page three, and never look back. Get something finished, no matter how lousy it is. […] Perfectionists cannot get going unless they kind of do violence to their own instincts, and just blast ahead.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Last Interview and Other Conversations

[longing4angels]

The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.

Thomas Ligotti in ‘Songs of a Dead Dreamer’

[weltenwellen]

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

[boymounter]

just ask that person out, the worst thing they can say is an esoteric incantation that topologically inverts your body

[happyheidi]

astronomy notes by Galileo Galilei. x

[galina]

Love is stored in the water basin at agios georgios overlooking the aegean

[inertescapist]

Είμαστε κάτι διάχυτες αισθήσεις, χωρίς ελπίδα να συγκεντρωθούμε.

[inertescapist]

Είμαστε κάτι διάχυτες αισθήσεις,

χωρίς ελπίδα να συγκεντρωθούμε.

Στα νεύρα μας μπερδεύεται όλη η φύσις.

Στο σώμα, στην ενθύμηση πονούμε.

Μας διώχνουνε τα πράγματα, κι η ποίησις

είναι το καταφύγιο που φθονούμε.

[inertescapist]

Είμαστε κάτι διάχυτες αισθήσεις, χωρίς ελπίδα να συγκεντρωθούμε.

[metamorphesque]

💌 Kafka, the Wardrobe and the Sunday Dress 💌

But on a better subject: Do you know when you were most beautifully dressed in Vienna, absolutely, absurdly beautifully dressed? There can’t be any argument about it: on Sunday.

Tuesday, July 6

By the way, why am I a human being, with all the torments this extremely vague and horribly responsible condition entails? Why am I not, for example, the happy wardrobe in your room, which has you in full view whenever you’re sitting in your chair or at your desk or when you’re lying down or sleeping (all blessings upon your sleep!)? Why am I not that? Because I would break down with grief if I had seen your misery during these last days, or even if—you should leave Vienna.

Thursday, July 15

Milena, industrious one, your room is undergoing a change in my mind; the desk and the whole place really didn’t look much like work before, but now it does, and so convincingly that I can feel this work; in your room it must be magnificently hot and cool and happy. Only the wardrobe remains as ponderous as always and sometimes the lock is broken and it doesn’t yield a thing, desperately staying shut, and in particular it refuses to give up the dress you wore on “Sunday”; if you should ever set up house again we’ll throw it out.

Thursday, July 22

Yes, the wardrobe. It will probably be the object of our first and last fight. I’ll say: “We’re throwing it out.” You’ll say: “It’s staying.” I’ll say: “Choose between it and me.” You’ll say: “Just a second. Frank and Schrank, * they rhyme. I’ll take the Schrank.” “Fine,” I’ll say and slowly walk down the stairs (which?) and—if I still haven’t found the Danube Canal, I’ll be living happily ever after.

Tuesday, July 27

And incidentally I’m all in favor of the wardrobe—you just shouldn’t wear the dress. You’ll wear it out and what will be left for me then?

Tuesday, July 27

And I trust you didn’t read my dumb jokes aloud to your wardrobe? You know I love almost everything in your room to the point of swooning.

Tuesday, July 27

[04k96]

[metamorphesque]

translation [On July 2, 1977, at the age of 78, Vladimir Nabokov passed away. Vera outlived him by 14 years, years which she spent working on her husband's creative heritage, including the task of translating his novels into Russian. After her death, her ashes were mixed with those of Vladimir Nabokov. Even in eternity, they remained inseparable.]

[shisasan]

wishing all my followers unexpected good news and something that restores their faith a little