Cars that hover and dads who come home

[iseetinymen-blog]

"...life [...] is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, it is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly into the city's iron heart, endured."

"The French Lieutenant's Woman" by John Fowles

[iseetinymen-blog]

Hope is the result of confusing the desire that something should take place with the probability that it will. Perhaps no man is free from this folly of the heart, which deranges the intellect’s correct appreciation of probability to such an extent that, if the chances are a thousand to one against it, yet the event is thought a likely one. Still in spite of this, a sudden misfortune is like a death stroke, whilst a hope that is always disappointed and still never dies, is like death by prolonged torture. He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear; this is the meaning of the expression “desperate.” It is natural to a man to believe what he wishes to be true, and to believe it because he wishes it, If this characteristic of our nature, at once beneficial and assuaging, is rooted out by many hard blows of fate, and a man comes, conversely, to a condition in which he believes a thing must happen because he does not wish it, and what he wishes to happen can never be, just because he wishes it, this is in reality the state described as “desperation.”

"Psychological Observations" by Arthur Schopenhauer

[iseetinymen-blog]

"I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many may never come) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the objet which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognized them the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life. And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it all: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die."

In Search of Lost Time Volume I: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

[iseetinymen-blog]

Proof that Neil Gaiman knows what's up and that he is possibly one of the best lovers in the universe

For Amanda, an appreciation (After Christopher Smart. Sort of.)

For I shall enumerate my lady’s charms, although they are numberless.

For FIRSTLY, she has a smile like a beam of sunlight breaking through a cloud in a medieval painting.

For SECONDLY she moves like cats and panthers and also she can stand still.

For THIRDLY she has eyes of a color that no two people can agree on, which I remember when I close my eyes.

For FOURTHLY she laughs at my jokes, sings unconcerned on the sidewalk and gives money to buskers as a religious act.

For FIFTHLY she fucks like wild cats in thunderstorms.

For SIXTHLY her kisses are gentle.

For SEVENTHLY I would follow her, or walk behind her, or in front of her, wherever she wished to go, and being with her would ease my mind.

For EIGHTHLY I dream of her and am comforted.

For NINTHLY there is no one like her, not that I’ve ever met, and I’ve met so many people, no-one at all.

For lastly she squeals when I say “waste-paper basket” and also in the morning, eyebrowless and waking, she always looks so perfectly surprised.

[signed] Neil Gaiman (for the fireflies)

[emergencyreports-blog]

[iseetinymen-blog]

I ask my friend Bob what his New Year’s Resolutions are and he says, with a shrug (indicating that this is obvious or not surprising ): to drink less, to lose weight… He asks me the same, but I am not ready to answer him yet. I have been studying my Zen again, in a mild way, out of desperation...

[iseetinymen-blog]

"People... I have seen the finale of thousands of lives of man. Young, old, each one was so sure of their realness. That their sensory experience constituted a unique individual. Purpose, meaning. So certain that they were more than a biological puppet. Truth wills out, everybody sees once the strings are cut off all down."

Rust - "True Detective"

[iseetinymen-blog]

"'Beyin göçü' tâbiri aslında palavraydı. Doğru tâbir, 'korteks göçü' idi. Beyin korteksi ancak memleket dışında yaşama imkânı bulurken, limbik sistem sadece burada sefâ sürüyordu."

"Gâliz Kahraman" - İhsan Oktay Anar

[iseetinymen-blog]

"One situation where people are switching from bullets to film is the photographic safari that is replacing the gun safari. [...] Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because the nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. Now nature - tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures."

"On Photography" by Susan Sontag

[iseetinymen-blog]

These boys, now, were living as we’d been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities.

"Sonny’s Blues" by James Baldwin

[iseetinymen-blog]

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death."

Macbeth - "Macbeth", 5.5.22 

[iseetinymen-blog]

"But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remained poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."

In Search Of Lost Time Volume I: Swann's Way, Marcel Proust

[iseetinymen-blog]

Doktor çağırmak âdetti. Hastalar iyileşsin iyileşmesin doktor çağırılmalıydı. Ne hayat, ne de ölüm adını verdiğimiz kardeşi, doktorsuz olurdu. Hele ölüm… Yaşadığımız dünyada başında doktor olmadan ölmek adeta ayıptı. Bu ancak muharebe meydanlarında, insanlar toptan, binlerce, on binlerce öldükleri zaman olabilirdi. Çünkü ölüm aslında pahalı bir şeydi. Fakat bazen ucuzlar, herkesin olurdu.

Huzur, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

[iseetinymen-blog]

"Don’t worry about control! Freedom is what you’re working toward," Haber said gustily. “Freedom! Your unconscious mind is not a sink of horror and depravity. That’s a Victorian notion, and a terrifically destructive one. It crippled most of the best minds of the nineteenth century, and hamstrung psychology all through the first half of the twentieth. Don’t be afraid of your unconscious mind! It’s not a black pit of nightmares. Nothing of the kind! It is the wellspring of health, imagination, creativity. What we call ‘evil’ is produced by civilization, its constraints and repressions, deforming the spontaneous, free self-explanation of the personality. The aim of psycho-therapy is precisely this, to remove thouse groundless fears and nightmares, to bring up what’s unconscious into the light of rational consciousness, examine it objectively, and find that there is nothing to fear."

Dr. Haber - "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. Le Guin

[iseetinymen-blog]

Well, We Were Expecting This (*)

The last two weeks have been the second shittiest period of my life and it seems that this will be on my menu for a while. It's been snowballing as if to test me how much I can postpone the insatiable urge to shoot people - five or so - in the fucking mouth.

I used to tolerate all this shit for the sake of making do with the beautiful things I have in my life and with the hope that I can manage to go my way and protect my sanity. Yet, as I've experienced, I cannot. Not anymore.

I hate this shitty, narrow-minded country I'm in, and I hate the family I was born into. I hate it when I'm unhappy/frustrated about something, and all I hear is "Well, you know, that's the way it is." You know what? Fuck that. I don't want to be at this side of the table anymore. I've never told anyone how to live their lives, and why the fuck am I always watching them imposing their dip shit opinions on mine?

I cannot wait to graduate and earn my own fucking life so that I can get the hell away from this retardation that's gradually surrounding me. 

I don't want to sound like a complaining discontent asshole, but I hate it.

I just fucking hate it.

(*) But Also Hoping It Wouldn't Come

[iseetinymen-blog]

My poor father was baffled and afraid. He was unable to believe that there could be anything seriously wrong between us. And this was not only because he would not then have known what to do about it; it was mainly because he would then have had to face the knowledge that he had left something, somewhere, undone, something of the utmost importance.

David, "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin

[iseetinymen-blog]

"Whatever happens, happens."

Spike

[sizigyy-deactivated20130503]