Down

“Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Mum and Dad

They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
– Philip Larkin

Stillness

"It is difficult for a camel to go through the eye of a needle and difficult for the man of the world to find stillness; whether he is powerful or insignificant, it is difficult to find stillness in life's noise... [and] whoever says that this stillness does not exist is merely making noise. Have you ever really heard that anyone in stillness made up his mind that it does not exist, even though you probably have heard big words and loud talk and noisy doings to get rid of stillness in order to have, instead of conscience and stillness and God's voice delivering judgment in stillness, a nature-echo from the crowd, a confused collective scream, a general opinion in which one, out of cowardice, fearing for oneself, is not alone. But you, my listener, if you fear this stillness, even though you are doing your best to have a conscience (without stillness conscience does not exist at all) and to have a good conscience, then keep on, then endure it; this stillness is not the stillness of death in which you perish, it is not the sickness unto death -- it is the transition to life."
--------------------------------------------------------

~Source: Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions: "On the Occasion of a Confession" (1845)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

My wife

My wife. She looked straight at me one day. That afternoon, a little over a year ago, we made our son, and I thought that that’s how all people come together. A person arrives out of nowhere, for no special reason or for a reason that’s unclear, and offers himself or herself to someone else, who finds it perfectly natural, since that’s how all people come together, and in that great moment they both give themselves to each other for life, without looking back or thinking twice, they both give themselves to each other for life, since from that great moment on, the rest of life will be equally natural, inexplicable, and grand.

The Implacable Order of Things - By José Luís Peixoto
Nan. A Talese/Doubleday, 2008

The cemetery

“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Final Reward

“The final reward of the dead - to die no more.”

Nietzsche

Death

“I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay

A Man Doesn't Have Time in his Life

A Man Doesn't Have Time in his Life
Yehuda Amichai

A man doesn't have time in his life

to have time for everything.

He doesn't have seasons enough to have

a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes

Was wrong about that.
...............................

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,

to laugh and cry with the same eyes,

with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,

to make love in war and war in love.

And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,

to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest

what history

takes years and years to do.
...............................

A man doesn't have time.

When he loses he seeks, when he finds

he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves

he begins to forget.
...............................

And his soul is seasoned, his soul

is very professional.

Only his body remains forever

an amateur. It tries and it misses,

gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,

drunk and blind in its pleasures

and its pains.
...............................

He will die as figs die in autumn,

Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,

the leaves growing dry on the ground,

the bare branches pointing to the place

where there's time for everything.

The Problem

We haven’t yet solved the problem of God,” the Russian critic Belinsky once shouted across the table at Turgenev, “and you want to eat!”

Read

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. . . . Certainly we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap.

Henry D. Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849

Religious Beliefs

All religious beliefs prompt rejection. Souls are reincarnated? Ridiculous. The Bible is divinely inspired? Dangerous nonsense. Muhammad is the prophet of God? Poppycock. Jesus rose from the dead? Absurd. It is the common fate of doctrines to be dismissed; you’d almost think that’s what they were made for.

Alan Jacobs, Original Sin: A Cultural History, p. ix.

All men are bores

"All men are bores. The word itself suggests the possibility of a subdivision. It may just as well indicate a man who bores others as one who bores himself. Those who bore others are the mob, the crowd, the infinite multitude of men in general. Those who bore themselves are the elect, the aristocracy; and it is curious that those who do not bore themselves usually bore others, while those who bore themselves entertain others."

~Source: Either/Or (1843)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

Bookshelves

“Bookshelves are not for displaying books you’ve read. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be.”

Ezra Klein

"I Will Follow You Into the Dark"

Love of mine some day you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
To illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
To illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It's nothing to cry about
Cause we'll hold each other soon
The blackest of rooms

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
To illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
Then I'll follow you into the dark

Death Cab for Cutie

( from the album Plans on Atlantic Records )