Ennui
I was always somebody. I was famous at the Chevron. I’ve had some trials that would have made the average motherfucker jump out a window a long time ago, but if you wake up one morning and say, ‘I can’t do it no more,’ then it’s all over. That’s why I wake up every morning and say, let’s do this shit. Let’s get it.
I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.
—Franz Kafka (via troubled)
Wind, pushing the back of my coat, forcing my collar up against the back of my neck. I am staring at wet black stones, geometric lines leading forever up, up into more lines into more steps into similar spots. But I am thinking of red dust in far off distances lost to the future. And I am sad. My heart dips low tonight because it feels abstract and strange— lost in so many lights glowing in wet slickness. All is stone and silence and I am here, bounded by no things, but all things. Floundering in fabricated facades of functions and understandings that have been filled to the brim and tipped into the gutter and I am left, hollow, silent, looking onto, what? The future? No. Here, now, me. Just, me. And I cannot place this desolation but it hangs low on my insides tonight. It is a simple statement, smothering me in its transparency. I am,
disappointed
in
myself.
I have let myself
down.
I have let my family
down.
I am a vessel of
sad
normalcy.
Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I’ve only found sorrow.
—Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (via titlesareboring)
We constructed our lives around a misunderstanding, and if ever I tried to pull it out and fix it now I would fall down flat. Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It’s everyone’s come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.
—Adah Price from The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (via bradele)
Excerpt from Journal, Final Entry
September 11th, 2011:
Nihilism and a loss of purpose have been the trends of the west since the 19th century—perhaps even earlier. I think that the task of my age—of our writers and poets, be they of English or Science— is to reinvigorate the human spirit with a sense of understanding and mystery. Cynicism is easy. We need love, drama, and the unexpected in the face of destruction. We need to believe in something. The goal of our age is to realize that things are beautiful because of the fact that they must end, not in spite of it.
It’s been an exciting year. Here’s to another.
(Source: jpegheaven, via petitebrunette)
Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? … Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.
—John Steinbeck, East of Eden (via auhasardrobert)
