#on destruction

[inkpressedpetals]

[corruptedtwinks]

molly mccully brown // im-sun // millennium parade // rachel eliza griffiths // franz kafka // anaïs nin // toby fox // kreophagos // rachel gillig // audre lorde // elizabeth riddell // kenny fries

character webweave: ambrosine narciso

[voicedwords]

We fell in love in tumultuous times, Aidan Bernales

[quotingmyjourneys]

"Yes. The Echtroi are those who hate, those who would keep you from being Named, who would unName you. It is the nature of love to create. It is the nature of hate to destry."

— A Wind in the Door (Madeleine L'Engle), pub. 1973, USA

[oblivion-soave]

The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred. The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, out of his own condition. Really, only the insight into how radically the world is simplified when tested for its worthiness for destruction leads to such an Apollonian image of the destroyer. This is the great bond embracing and unifying all that exists. It is a sight that affords the destructive character a spectacle of deepest harmony. The destructive character is always blithely at work. It is Nature that dictates his tempo, indirectly at least, for he must forestall her. Otherwise she will take over the destruction herself. The destructive character sees no image hovering before him. He has few needs, and the least of them is to know what will replace what has been destroyed. First of all, for a moment at least, empty space –the place where the thing stood or the victim lived. Someone is sure to be found who needs this space without occupying it.

Walter Benjamin, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2,1931–1934

[oblivion-soave]

The beginning of the short essay clearly points to a situation in which the destructive character is personified by non benevolent figures: those to whom we endure all our deeper obligations. With such a statement Benjamin makes clear that the source of the destructive character is not a liberating force, but an oppressive one. And yet for Benjamin it is precisely the sudden realization – the shock – that our life depends on forces that are in essence destructive that introduces us to the use of such forces for our own sake.

Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Theology of Tabula Rasa: Walter Benjamin and Architecture in the Age of Precarity

[ghoci]

My view of destruction has never been a negative one. I’ve always thought about it as necessary for some kind of new start or rebirth. “ If you don’t like something, then it must be destroyed so that something else can have a chance to grow.” Good or bad are objective though. In my mind either something works or it doesn’t.

I turn this in on myself as well. If I don’t like something I change it. If I don’t like me, then I’ll change me. So that I can do this successfully I have to be in a state of mind where I know that I can’t back out. I left California with limited money, a beater car and a lease that I had signed before I had even seen the place. I did this so that I would have to succeed or die. I always do this.

Today I’m making a new change. Today I’ll try to be something else. I’ve been trying to destroy what I don’t like about me for the past year, and I think this will be the last step to my rebirth. Good or bad, I want it on my terms. God or bad, it’s time to give something else a try.