Wonder Blerg

Sometimes, you have to roll a hard six.

[wonderblerg]

Everyone goes through a period of traviamento - when we take, say, a different turn in life, the other via. Dante himself did. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns, find themselves leading the wrong life all life long.

[wonderblerg]

“It’s never going to be easy with you, is it?” she asked. “You’ll keep on changing, as will I.”

“Would you have it any other way?” he asked. “Safety is an illusion, as is faith without temptation. We’re imperfect, unlike the gods, but in that imperfection we may yet make them jealous.”

[wonderblerg]

“I… regret… what I did. I was wrong. Very wrong. But regret is meaningless. … “Regret is never meaningless,” I said. “It’s not enough, not on its own; you have to change, too.”

[wonderblerg]

Consider: an immensely powerful being is yours to command. He must obey your every whim. Wouldn’t the temptation to diminish him, to humble him and make yourself feel powerful by doing so, be almost irresistible?

[wonderblerg]

Perhaps it is the dream of every parent to keep their child in that brief period between helpless dependence and separate selfhood, when the parent is seen as perfect, faultless. It is a dream of control and mastery disguised as love, the dream that Lear had about Cordelia

[wonderblerg]

Every now and then you run up on one of those days when everything's in vain... a stone bummer from start to finish; and if you think you know what's good for you, on days like these you sort of hunker down in a safe corner and watch. ... then drive out, later on, to the beach.

[wonderblerg]

What exactly is a father to a daughter? The father is a man, yet to the daughter he is not. Wherever she goes he is behind or alongside at an angle, her often clumsy shadow. She'll never shake him off. The father has the advantage of the older man. He is solid; at arm's length; at the same time, distant: a blurry authority, always with the promise of softening.

[wonderblerg]

I have always despised waiting. Waiting is a mechanism of torture used in the dungeon of time. I am a captive in the clutches of some overbearing power

[wonderblerg]

[wonderblerg]

[wonderblerg]

[centuriespast]

[wonderblerg]

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way.

[days-of-reading]

Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

[radstudies]

[radstudies]

[radstudies]