Kindle Notes & Highlights
I remembered him and missed him. We hadn’t seen each other in so long! With uncommon intensity I realized what a great thing friendship is. And at the same time it’s the most joyous thing that life gives us. The beauty of poetry, of music, of nature, the delights of good food and drink lose their taste and become a little sad when we don’t have a friend to share them with. I really think that everything in life can be summed up thus: the search for a friend, a struggle against loneliness.
In the words of Hermann Hesse, “What we love is always a symbol.” He concludes the impossibility of focusing your love on anything on earth.
But that’s what those who love cannot accept. Even those for whom the flame has gone out dream of hearing from someone, someday, the words that Heine wrote to a woman: “I will love you eternally and even afterward.” The flame must never go out, even though the candle goes on consuming itself. The art of loving is the art of not letting the flame go out. You can’t let the light sleep. You have to hasten to awaken it (Bachelard). And, a curious thing, the same flame that the wind so impetuously blows out returns to be lit again by the caress of a soft breath…
It so happens that the gods played with us and made our bodies out of another substance. In our flesh lives desire. And desire is this: an opening to the whole universe, arms that embrace everything from the most distant stars to the infinitesimal creatures.
To be able to see, you have to stop thinking.
Anxiety is a hole left by forgotten desire, the hole of a heart that no longer exists, a desperate shout asking for desire and the heart to come back so that the beauty of the crown of the ipê against the blue sky can be enjoyed.
All this is as introduction to the continuation of our demonological meditations, which have already begun. To absolve the Devil of an unfair accusation that’s always made about him, that he puts impure thoughts in the heads of poor mortals. Nothing further from the truth. This power was not conceded to him.
The Devil doesn’t throw trash in the well. He just messes around with the mud lying beneath the clean water.
So that’s all the Devil does: He awakens desires that already live within us. He doesn’t lay the egg. He only breaks the egg that we lay—just to see what’s inside, if it’s life or death.
Every moment is crepuscular.
To those who struggle against death, nothing is taught about the wisdom of listening to life and talking about its last wish, to leave…
Prayer is this: this communion with love above the emptiness…
