Toward the Creative Nothing

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

[poeticsofdeath]

We cannot make ourselves understand; the most we can do is to foster a state of mind, in which understanding may come to us.

Aldous Huxley

[poeticsofdeath]

where did you go?

I'm here.

[poeticsofdeath]

...existence has become an unreasoning, wild dance around the golden calf, a mad worship of God Mammon. In that dance and in that worship man has sacrificed all his finer qualities of the heart and soul — kindness and justice, honor and manhood, compassion and sympathy with his fellowman."

Alexander Berkman

[poeticsofdeath]

He who goes seeking leaves himself behind. [...] We can go toward nothing unless that thing has first come toward us. The Brain is not only the center of gravity, but is gravity. The Will is not only the inventor of the universe, but is the universe. We go toward ourselves.  I have infinities, eternities, nadirs, zeniths boxed in my brain. I am always delivering myself to myself, cannot forsake myself, cannot possibly exist in the world—seeing that the world exists in me. The world began with mind; before that it was only a possibility. The brain is the radiant hub of the universal illusion. We have exiled the stars in their spaces and imprisoned light in its wall-less tombs of air.

Benjamin De Casseres, The Brain and the World

THIS IS BRILLIANT. 

[poeticsofdeath]

We never come into contact with things, but only with their images. We never know the real—only the effigies of the real. We do not pursue objects; we pursue the reflection of objects. We do not possess things; we possess the sentiment that things inspire. Imagination and its elements are not the effigies of matter, but what we term matter is the effigy of our images. Hence the imaginary world—the world of intellect and images—is the only real world. It is the un-analyzable data of consciousness. We never get over the threshold of our images. We live in them whether in rest or motion. Illusion does not consist in believing our images and dreams to be real, but in believing that there exists anything else but images and dreams. The illusions of the brain are the only realities; they become delusions when we try to externalize them. All practical men are insane because they seek to externalize the internal. All poets and philosophers are sane because they seek to internalize the external.

Benjamin De Casseres, The Brain and the World

[poeticsofdeath]

Whenever I've tried to free my life from a set of circumstances that continually oppress it, I've been instantly surrounded by other circumstances of the same order, as if the inscrutable web of creation were irrevocably at odds with me.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

[liberatingreality]

If you want to kill yourself, kill what you don’t like. Kill narcissus. I had an old self that I killed. You can kill yourself too, but that doesn’t mean you got to stop living.

Vargus, Archie’s Final Project

[foxessius-blog]

[poeticsofdeath]

Currently listening to. 

[poeticsofdeath]

The more I suffer, the more I realize that it is an error that life be examined theoretically. Life should be a constant flow of interaction; inexorably engaging in the world. Life should be engagement in business. When one steps outside of life, from a cosmic point of view, one opens himself up to deterioration. In this theoretical zone, the atmosphere is poisonous, the air toxic. Life cannot bear life from this point of view. This is the fundamental error of existential thinking, or higher consciousness.

[poeticsofdeath]

Since the number of possible ideas vastly outnumber the brain’s capacity to hold ideas, hold them simultaneously, and organize their interrelations - we can never know everything. The inherent inability to know everything is to be fundamentally ignorant of the true nature of existence and true meaning of existence. Since man is helplessly condemned to ignorance, man’s sciences, philosophies, and religions are all futile insofar as they try to answer questions of true nature and meaning.

[poeticsofdeath]

Metaphysical and epistemological questions seek answers merely to stave off the suffering of not knowing. Ultimately, philosophy has one aim: to eradicate suffering. Since suffering is an intrinsic component of the human condition, which manifests itself organically, independent of reflection and philosophical argument, all philosophical aims are—to be precise—futile.

[poeticsofdeath]

October 5th

You cannot insult a man more atrociously than by refusing to believe he is suffering. 

October 15th

Certainly by suffering, one can learn many things. Unfortunately, suffering robs us of the strength to make use of them. 

October 28th 

Suffering serves no purpose. 

— Cesare Pavese,  Diaries 1935-1950

[adrasteiax]

(…) what happened (to Kafka) is the same as what happened to me: he withdrew he went too far into solitude and knew — he must’ve known — you never come back from there

Alejandra Pizarnik, from Psychopathology Ward 

[poeticsofdeath]

Pray for me that I may not turn a Judas to Jesus in this painful darkness.

[poeticsofdeath]

Currently listening to. 

[poeticsofdeath]

Forgetfulness trivializes existence. Man is always transitioning to the next event, necessarily distracted. Though man pridefully and foolishly believes in the remembrance of ideas and events, memories are always too buried, too conflated, and too tangled in the abyss of the unconscious.

Even if meaning was attained, it would be isolated in mind, forgotten, and replaced by the uncompromising waves of thought.  

[poeticsofdeath]

I believe [...] that the one who is most alone is the strongest one.

Renzo Novatore