As many truths
As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.
David Mitchel, Cloud Atlas
just thinking of you, bill
Bill HicksThe world is like a ride at an amusement park ride, and when you choose to go on it you think its real, because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round, and it has thrills and chills, and its very brightly colored. And it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question “is this real? or is this just a ride?”. Other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say “don’t worry, don’t be afraid ever, because it’s just a ride.” And we… kill those people.
prose
In our respecvtive roles, we got along relatively well. Yet no sooner had we thought we’d reached a lasting arrangement than something crumbled. The tinyiest hint of something, but it was never to be recovered. We’d been walking down a long blind alley. That was our end.
To her, I was already lost. Even if she still loved me, it didn’t matter. We’d gotten too used to each other’s role. She understood it instinctively; I knew it from experience. There was no hope.
Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
ballard
“The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.”—JG Ballard
This sounds frighteningly like the present. Don’t forget to vote, and make it a vote for sanity and survival.
manuscript
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.—Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
a quote
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
the traveler
The traveler asks himself: if he lived out
a lifetime, pushing the distance away,
does he come back to the place where his
grieving began:
squander his dose of identity again,
say his goodbyes again, and go?—Pablo Neruda