Geometry for Ocelots

by Exurb1a

Many maintain that the best conjuring illusions are the ones we never discover the trick behind. They are remarkable, certainly. More incredible though are those illusions we discover the trick behind, and come to find the trick even more enchanting than the illusion itself. Such is the world. Welcome.

The only noble desire is for the end of desire. Few are brave enough to admit this.

Urinating one morning he became transfixed with an intricate pattern on the plaster of the toilet and mangled the tip of his penis in his trouser zip. Such is the path to enlightenment.

The leader of the troop replied that the universe was a mystery in plain sight, and it was right to sing its praises at all hours of the day. Also, since Anaximander and the musicians were made of universe, really the universe was praising itself, and wasn’t that marvellous?

“You made me this thing, this new thing. I look and see now. I hear and listen now. I’m sad in ways I never imagined. I can’t sit still. I can’t think straight. Some days I can’t believe I’m alive and other days I don’t want to be alive anymore.

She said, “I shan’t ever forget those nights in the fields or those nights on our cliff. I shan’t ever forget my very clever native.” Johannes’ tears spoiled the flatness of the water. “I don’t care,” he said.

“The difference between a hero and a fool is nothing more than the bias of the biographer.

The child longs for the responsibilities of adulthood. The adult, crushed by those responsibilities, longs only to be a child again.”

If I asked you in the midst of a tragedy, “Shall I end your suffering and make all well again?” you would answer, “Please do, I beg it.” If instead I asked you after the tragedy, “Are you glad you lived through it? Did you grow wiser from the experience?” you would answer, “Yes! Thank you for not stopping the thing prematurely.” Humans are not to be trusted. - Excerpts from The Rambling Sutras of Lord Lepus

played out in every quiet corner of the universe’s being. And surely Leo himself was a part of that game too, he realised. He was mud. He was a mud thing; not apart from the world but of it, a tiny footnote in the great book of existence. He longed desperately to open that book and scour it from start to finish, and come away with the purpose of creation. His will diminished to nothing. His ambition diminished to nothing. Almost everything in the universe was not him, and yet nonetheless, he was universe.

bruh how old is this kid

The true horror of existence is not the certainty of death, nor the threat of hell, but the knowledge that we will likely go our entire lives as impossibly complex machines, walking about in an impossibly complex universe, and never truly discover what it was all for. I don’t know is brave. I’ll never know is heroic.

She would tell Leo of lovers past, of her loneliness, of the many years of compromise born of not knowing there was an alternative to dull half-love.

It seemed to him suddenly that self-hate was the result of a misguided attempt to please people one would never meet, and if one did meet such judgemental idiots, one would not respect them nor desire their respect in the first place.

If I had dominion over all the atoms of all the worlds, I wouldn’t go back and change the course of one, not by the slightest deviation, because you might not have been my son.

There is nothing worse than to remain sober around those who are drinking. Their euphoria intensifies, while you only grow quietly embarrassed for them. At some point during the evening they will intuit you are judging their follies and become self-conscious. They will despise you for depriving them of the bliss of drunken excess by virtue of your watching. The reaction is much the same from the gluttonous, rich, and powerful when one reminds them that the resources of the environment are not infinite. They might continue to plunder, but they will hate you for bringing conscience into their debauchery, for turning the light on during the orgy. Why, the house was burning down, but we were so enjoying the glow. . .

Be kind, and when you can’t be kind, be fair. And when you can’t be fair, be clever. And when you can’t be clever, please be kind again.

If we’re forced to be in a mysterious universe, and that universe is mute on the subject of its own motivations for existing, I’ll still take living in honest ignorance over your metaphysical posturing any day. That’s real bravery. Not concocting blatantly contradictory stories to comfort oneself, not appealing to the vague transcendent every time you get your worldview in a twist.

Science did not kill magic. Yes, we've had to dispense with spells and incantations. Yes, the universe is more apathetic than previously supposed. But in return for accepting these losses, we have gained a picture of the world so unfathomably beautiful and mysterious that if God truly existed, He Himself could not fathom it.