Geometry for Ocelots

by Exurb1a

But what gave the world its beauty? What deemed that it be this beauty and not some other? What deemed that it be this structure and not some other, or even that it exist at all?

Now he only sat and listened to the forest about him, allowing each sensation to pass through his mind and leave it. The rustling of the leaves. The creaking of the branches. The unsung, thankless miracle of being. .

Buddhism

She thought of her plunge into the Vex lake, the way her consciousness had opened up lotus-like. For just a moment she had seen emotion and sensation for what they were: no more than dirt one could effortlessly brush off from the lantern of pure awareness.

“Shyness is just narcissism for introverts.

Cool phrase

The waiting new world appeared infinite, an ecstatic, lilting waltz.

perennial abstainer of fun, apparent bore with a good heart, we are sorry for your loss.

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. And better all history’s indignities stay unchanged and you remain my son than the other way around.

Love in cosmic language

Is there a more opulent society imaginable than one that builds spaceships while its population starves?

Gearheart should one day fall at the hands of chaos and malignancy, even if matter and time should one day come unstuck, even if everything should perish forever without recovery, they could never doubt there had been at least one night in the history of the harsh universe when all had been well. They would crawl into their beds later speechless, aching, exhausted, and, for once, excited to wake to the coming day and all the good things it promised. All was possible again.

“We are wanting for the end of all wanting,” Marta said. The three Devas bowed. Had formality not prevailed, Leo would’ve kissed Marta on the forehead with the loving pride of ten thousand fathers.

If I could sum up how I felt reading that plaque in Koprivshtitsa, learning that the revolutionaries I’d spent a few days learning about and coming to admire had failed in what must be one of the bravest human struggles it is that: History is drunk. History is not literature, not cinema, and humans are not archetypes or purposed agents within history.

We live for strange self-assigned reasons, or strange reasons assigned from on high by those more powerful than us. We die sometimes for stupid reasons or no reason. The world may be a story, but the plot delivers no catharsis, and the moral the story is trying to get across is far from obvious.