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several intelligent people were trying to put a religious spin on the events;
The establishment of the no-pain-no-gain orthodoxy ensured the integration of pain into the capitalist ethic, whereas some other economic structures just ended up with no gain and only pain. Economists will tell you that this anomaly is gain’s own fault and sociologists will tell you that they are in pain. In this insidious way, pain writes itself into our lives. As a necessity, as a backlight through which we see our outline. Pain shows us our shape, pain defines us and our extremities
how much can you take, how much will you give? So far this chapter is a pain. Behind every action – irrational, prescriptive, proscriptive or cruel – there is pain. Pain denied, pain refused, pain dispensed, pain received. Where there is a whiff of destruction, there is a wick of pain. On both sides of trauma’s see-saw, pain sits and pouts. Blessed are those who find pleasure in it. The drama in all actions, all fractions, all passions, every quadratic modality, each didactic anomaly all reduce down to pain. Pain in the springtime, pain in the rain, at this time we are not certain of the
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Imagine, if you will, that you are as you are, sucking your daily life out of disposable cups bearing your name, going to locations to do activities, struggling with feelings, and suddenly a colossal watermelon greens out the sky – falls from the heavens – and shatters, spitting rip tides of redness, rains of flesh and black cannons of seeds. Imagine if it found a mouth and talked. How would you feel?
the holy and the wretched dissolving to the same residue,
The intangible ever-present problem of life – dissatisfaction with product.
The thirteen that people fear is only thirteen in base ten. Thirteen in base ten is fifteen in base eight. Thirteen in base eight is eleven in base ten. Thirteen in base ten is ten in base thirteen. Luck is context-dependent. • There are thirteen lunar cycles in a year. The moon has birthdays in multiples of thirteen. It’s a celebration number! Instead of despairing, choose to RSVP. • Thirteen is a prime number, integral and wholesome, not a faceless conglomerate of spineless factors that scatter quickly under threat of division.
Lived truth is stranger than any fiction,
‘Life is not a disease. It has no cure.’
And now some bold claims. The only thing to really accept is that life has no purpose. Feel this from the depth of your being, carve it into your bones, pour it into your cavities, etch it on your liver. If life has no purpose, then existence requires no justification, then non-existence requires no acceptance. Yes, you no longer have access to many things about those who are gone and the space they hold in your heart shall never house new tenants (but don’t forget there’s all this other space too). Acceptance of death is an antidote to grief. Grief is making someone else’s existence about
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Anything else? What else is left to say here, ah! I enjoy my time alone now. Like, I really cherish it. Before, I just wanted to be alone because I was tired of being around people, but it’s not like it was so much fun being by myself either. Just less bad.
Now I’m so excited to sit back and be in the – what’s that word again? – tranquility, yes!
She had spent her whole life under the gloomy Category A label, but she never considered her extraordinary capacity to see what people felt, even when they couldn’t. In Root, who berated her, in everyone who did, she saw only the hatred they housed for themselves. It is a pity she never considered this in her evaluations of her intelligence. It is a pity that most people never do. That might be true genius.
All problems you see in the world are your problem. Often the world needs servicing, but equally often you might require an eye test.
‘Our visas run out tomorrow. We have to go back home.’
The ugliest, most dull-minded feeling, the celebration of belonging to artificial borders, the sense of community built by blood, paid in blood – patriotism.
