#problem of life

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

Man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward. To live is to suffer and the only solution of the problem of life is to suffer with courage.

from Mythology by Edith Hamilton 

[shewouldbuytheflowers]

I cannot - as you once proposed to me “solve the problem of life by losing myself in the problem of art” - Not only I cannot do that but I even feel that the problem of life hinders my problem of art. Now what is this “my problem of life”? It is chiefly: an effort to detach myself from life so as to be able to devote myself completely to art. And here I know exactly that you will answer: “Art cannot exist without life.” Yes - I admit but there should be an even balance of both elements while in my case life is always struggling to predominate and art naturally suffers.

Tina Modotti, from a letter to Edward Weston

[athousandgateaux]

Those of us who live in the shadow of Copernicus, must choose whether to adopt an eliminative approach to the cosmos or to withdraw into a pre-modern account, which privileges the irreducible enigma of things long before they’ve been touched by human desire. In each case, we are guided by the fundamental uncanniness of life itself, a life that ostensibly has no place in the universe, except as an appearance of the living dead. The problem of life enters the stage of thought as an aberration of nature. If life can be characterised in biological terms as a blind striving toward change and growth, then the other side of this striving is the sense of a deformation in the cosmos catching sight of itself being abjected from nothingness. Nowhere is this realization of the fundamental strangeness of life clearer than in the materiality of the human body.

Dylan Trigg, The Thing: A Phenomenology of Horror, pg. 36-37

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

The great problem in life is how to keep your integrity without rendering your efforts null and void.

from a letter to James Laughlin by Henry Miller on June 8, 1938

[athousandgateaux]

Today, the problem of life persists as an affront to an otherwise dormant universe. Barring a lapse into Gnosticism, this problem loses none of its intensity so long as we remain committed to either a phenomenological or materialist perspective. The problem of life – at heart, a problem of the uncanny – centres on the knowledge that one’s own body (to use a phenomenological idiom) signals a collapse not only in the experience of self, but also in the cosmos itself. For it is in the privileged expression of the human body that the strange facticity of matter gains its clearest expression.

Dylan Trigg, The Thing: A Phenomenology of Horror, pg. 37-38

[believeinyournightmare]

The life of a girl, perfectly illustrated by Cassandra Calin, a Romanian artist.

[oyshodyo]

I just started studying about Germany's language this morning in my school. And now i don't even remember anything except: Ich I am terrible at learning this language. I wish my school have portuguese class or spanish...