Mark Leidner's Blog, page 6

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.

He broke up with me in January, very much against my will; my sexual frigidity and general malaise for a few months pushed him away, and the long distance didn't help. We loved each other very much, and I feel like it all could have been worked through. He

You’ve surely drunk too much coffee before. & are familiar with the absurd, tap-dancey simulacrum of intelligence that this generates. Maybe you’ve also taken too much adderall or dexedrine and have felt this simulacrum of intelligence rise to a manic pitch of brilliant intensity. You can imagine these drugs as defining a rising line of greater and greater affect. This line of fake-smart soars off into the distance, drawing nearer and nearer to the sun. The line is eventually lost in the glare shed by its omniscience and genuine intelligence. But we are trapped down here, trapped with our feeble counterfeits of divinity.

This image, the line projected out by humanity’s artificial solutions to the problem of being ‘better,’ it’s a useful way to think about what we’re aiming for.

E.g.,

Many people imagine that humanity’s relationship with suicide is unique, and even definitive of us. There is a vast and false profundity in imagining that people are the only animals who kill themselves. The Taj Mahal is a tomb built for a woman. & is cherished as a majestic testament to the love of Jahan for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. But it is absurd and inhuman to imagine that Jahan was capable of loving a woman more than any fisherman who worked the river by the walls of his testament. Likewise, when every mother octopus ceases to eat after giving birth to her eggs & consumes her body in brooding over them, it is monstrous to imagine that she commits suicide for a reason less valid than any which drives us off a roof. These reasons for suicide, then, also lie on a line. This line also rises. Perhaps not towards a sun, but aimed at no less divine a realization because of it. You can imagine its terminus being a black constellation in a black sky. A constellation that spells ‘Better never to have been born.’ At this all-encompassing vantage, life is seen for what it is: a hairline crack that separates two infinite expanses of darkness. (When early evangelists for Christianity arrived in Northern Europe they found an immensely fatalist society. One of their most effective arguments was deployed by a monk who successfully converted a great chieftain. The monk told the lord that life was the warmth of a hut lit by a smoky hearth. The soul was a swift bird who flew out of a storm and into the hut thru a window. The bird did not pause. It flew the length of the hut, was briefly warmed, and darted out a window in the opposite wall. Back into the foul night.) It’s not difficult to see that suicide is simply another, perhaps colder, salvation.

And now, what bead does love draw? Where does its line point? What infinite security anchors the chain that all loves link arms to make visible?

Imagine a daughter hugging her father’s leg, thick as a tree trunk. A son burying his face into his mother’s hair as he’s carried up to bed. One friend sifting herself into words and sending the letter to another. One lover knitting his fingers behind his boyfriend’s head and drawing his mouth to his. The sharing of fluids. The weaving of bodies on woven bedsheets. Piercings and penetrations. Inseminations. Light, or heavy touches. Cascades that run uphill and pool in orgasm’s lamentable solitude. The marital love of adjacent columns who uphold the same roof. Old love that feels the axe coming down. Old love that melts difference into infinite tenderness. Old love that softens itself so that death’s shearing blade meets no resistance as it divides one from one.

The I has an egg. The warmth of affection softens its shell. The I has a membrane. Lovers strain to pierce it. And at the star by which all love is guided there is no membrane, no egg, no I.