Directions to Utopia

“Don’t mind me. Don’t take any notice of me. I do not exist. The fact is well known.” Samuel Beckett

[unencumberedbylogic]

In death, I gave you life?

[unencumberedbylogic]

has passed away...

[unencumberedbylogic]

has passed .

[coolthingsguyslike]

[unencumberedbylogic]

"He settled back again and looked up at the deep blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds. Errand liked mornings. In the morning a day was always full of promise. The disappointments usually did not start until later. "

- David Eddings, Guardians of the West (1987, Random House)

[seaymph]

“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

— Charles Bukowski, “The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship”   (via loveage-moondream)

[unencumberedbylogic]

"The Fool's wand is black; the others are white. For the unconscious Fool the spirit force remains always in potential, always ready, because he is not consciously directing it. We tend to misunderstand the colour black, seeing it as evil, or negation of life. Rather, black means all things being possible, infinite energy of life before consciousness has constructed any boundaries. When we fear blackness or darkness we fear the deep unconscious source of life itself."

- Rachel Pollack, The 78 Degrees of Wisdom (Red Wheel/Wiser LLC, 2019)

[unencumberedbylogic]

“The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?”

— Angela Davis (via mahakavi)

[philosophybits]

“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”

— Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Sufferings of the World”, Parerga and Paralipomena

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“Doesn’t rain make a memory more intimate?”

— Mark Doty, from “White Kimono,” Sweet Machine (HarperCollins, 1998)

[unencumberedbylogic]

If, when the spring comes,

I am already dead,

The flowers will flower in the same manner

And the trees will be no less green than last spring.

Reality doesn’t need me.

I feel great joy

To think that my death hasn’t the slightest importance.

If I knew that I would die tomorrow

And spring was due to arrive the day after tomorrow,

I would die contented, because it was due to arrive the day after tomorrow.

If that is its proper time, when would it come if not at that proper time?

I like everything to be real and everything to be right:

And I like it to be that way even if I don’t like it.

That is why, if I were to die now, I would die contented,

Because everything is real and everything is right.

People can pray in Latin over my coffin, if they wish.

If they wish, they can dance around it and sing.

I have no preferences for a time when I will have no preferences.

Whatever happens, when it happens, will be what it is.

- Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa), The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro (New Directions, 2020)

[philosophybits]

“Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place.”

— Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing (via quotespile)

[philosophybits]

“Those who are more skilled in railing at vice than in instilling virtue, and who break rather than strengthen men’s dispositions, are hurtful both to themselves and others.”

— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

[unencumberedbylogic]

“I can’t see how this all plays out.”

“Sure you do. Everyone dies. That’s always been how it is. Only question now is whether we can find some way to not all go at once.”

“If we do, then civilization dies. Everything humanity has ever done goes away.”

“Well, at least there won’t be anyone who misses it,” Amos said, and sighed. “You’re overthinking this, Cap’n. You got now and you got the second your lights go out. Meantime is the only time there is. All that matters is what we do during it.”

- James S. A. Corey, Leviathan Falls (Orbit, 2021)

[unencumberedbylogic]

“Easy to make rules,” Emma said. “Easy to make systems with a perfect logic and rigor. All you need to do is leave out the mercy, yeah? Then when you put people into it and they get chewed to nothing, it’s the person’s fault. Not the rules. Everything we do that’s worth shit, we’ve done with people. Flawed, stupid, lying, rules-breaking people. Laconians making the same mistake as ever. Our rules are good, and they’d work perfectly if it were only a different species.”

- James S.A. Corey, Tiamat's Wrath (Orbit, 2019)

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“We tend to be attracted to people who look like people we used to love.”

— Lewis Warsh, from Debtor’s Prison by Lews Warsh and Julie Harrison (Granary Books, 2001)

[philosophybits]

“She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words