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.

Good

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

Good

Hearing and not listening; forever the perpetual, stinging, unnamed sense at the back of his mind that he lived inside a brain too small to understand or even witness the true beauty of the world, and so the only option left was to languish in the self-imposed illusion that objects and errands and little fears and little hopes were the full extent of being alive, else go mad.

Good

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.

Good

If I told you of a man who hunts through the refuse and rubbish every day selecting only matter he can eat, or breaks into homes raiding pantries, you would be no closer to understanding his motives until I mentioned the meaning of his quest. He is hungry. All the descriptions of his eye colour and his height do nothing to explain that. The wisewoman said, The universe is not a man. No, Anaximander said. I believe its wants are stranger yet.

Good

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

Good

There was once a small spring. The spring was so persistent that over many years it eroded the land about it such that the spring became a stream. It felt pride at this. The stream persisted and after many more years it became a river. In time the river became an ocean and stretched across the world from horizon to horizon. Witness me, the ocean said. I am mighty. I am eternal. The sun, who had been watching all this time said, Be careful, ocean. For though you reach across the world now, you still derive from a single spring. Ha! the ocean said. I am an ocean, what need have I for a spring! And the sun did blaze. And the spring did dwindle. And the land became a desert once again.

Good

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.”

Good

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.

Good

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.

Good

I don’t know is brave. I’ll never know is heroic.

Good

“Shyness is just narcissism for introverts.

Good

His tears exploded on the parchment and the ink began to run as though it too were crying.

Good

“Societies are just like people. They have fears and hopes. They get self-hating, or impose exercise regimes, or turn to peach liqueur and piss the years away.”

Good

It wasn’t the poor who revolted. It wasn’t the rich who overran everything. It was the fat, satisfied middle class, and their fat, satisfied kids. There was no revolution. There was only the promise that revolutions would never happen again and everyone could carve out a comfy little space for themselves and talk to their fridge and own a crystal communicator if they only turned a blind eye to the end of the world.

Good

Had life grown harsher, or had he only grown more sensitive to life’s harshnesses?

Good

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.

Good