MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

…an unknown is in general organically hostile to man, and Homo sapiens is only a man in the full sense of the word when there are absolutely no question marks in his grammar, but just exclamation marks, commas and full stops alone.

[…] And if boots aren’t an illness— why on earth is “a soul” an illness?

[…] I could see: an infinitely huge, and, simultaneously, infinitely small, scorpion-like square-1 with a hidden, yet constantly sensed, minus-sting… But perhaps this was nothing other than my “soul”, voluntarily stinging itself, like the legendary scorpion of the ancients, with all that…

…How full I am! If only you knew how full I am!

Closer – she leant her shoulder against me – and we are one, there’s a flow from her to me—and I know: this is a necessity. I know with every nerve, every hair, every painfully sweet beat of my heart. And it’s such a joy to submit to this “necessity”.

I’m alone. It’s evening. There’s a light mist. The sky’s covered over with a milky-golden fabric, and if only I knew what was there— up above. And if only I knew who I was— what I was like.

It had somehow never occurred to me before—but it is precisely so, isn’t it: we on the earth are walking all the time above a bubbling, crimson sea of fire, hidden there— in the belly of the earth. But we never think about it. And so what if the thin shell beneath our feet turned to glass, what if we saw…

I turned to glass. I saw— inside myself, within.

‘I’d so like to visit you today and lower the blinds. Specifically today, now…’ O-90 shyly raised her round, crystalline-blue eyes to me.

She’s funny. Well, what could I say to her? She visited me only yesterday and knows as well as I do that our nearest sexual day is the day after tomorrow. It’s simply still her same problem of being “in advance of thought” - just as you can have the (sometimes..

Ma intorciam inapoi, dara numai Dumnezeu imi stia cum imi era mie inima. Cu toate ca stiam ca nu le pot ajuta cu nimic, eram tare nelinistita si ma munciau felurite ganduri pana ii vediam intorsi inapoi. Numai cu gandul la Dumnezeu eram si ma rugam neincetat, margand pe drum, lucrand, ca el sa-i paziasca si sa-i firiasca de toate nenorocirile. Si am cunoscut ca puteria lui Dumnezeu e foarte mare si te poate ajuta…

[…] My farm gives me a good many uncouth cares and anxieties, but I hate the language of complaint. Job, or some one of his friends, says well— Why should a living man complain?

There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the hour of care; consequently the dreary objects seem larger than the life.
Extreme sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy side by a series of misfortunes and disappointments, at that period of my existence when the soul is laying in her cargo of ideas for the voyage of life, is, I believe, the principal cause of this unhappy frame of mind.

There is no understanding a man properly, without knowing something of his previous ideas; that is to say, if the man has any ideas; for I know many who, in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas, 1.25—1.5—1.75 (or some such fractional matter)

28th April 1788

MADAM,—Your powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they make my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty.

As I commence farming at Whitsunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all.
As I got the offer of the Excise business without solicitation, and as it costs me only six months' attendance for instructions, to..

7th March 1788

MY DEAR SIR,—My life,since I saw you last,has been one continued hurry; that savage hospitality which knocks a man down with strong liquors,is the devil.
I have a sore warfare in this world; the devil, the world,& the flesh, are three formidable foes.
The first I generally try to fly from;
the second, alas! generally flies from me;
but the third is my plague, worse than the ten plagues of Egypt

I have been looking at farms, and, after all, perhaps I may settle in the character of a farmer. I have got so vicious a bent to idleness, and have ever been so little a man of business, that it will take no ordinary effort to bring my mind properly into the routine: but you will say a "great effort is worthy of you." I say so myself; and butter up my vanity with all the stimulating compliments I can think of.

[…] How are your soul and body putting up?—a little like man and wife I suppose…

😁

[…] and still my motto is—I DARE! My worst enemy is moi même. I lie so miserably open to the inroads and incursions of a mischievous, light-armed, well-mounted banditti, under the banners of imagination, whim, caprice, and passion; and the heavy-armed veteran regulars of wisdom, prudence, and forethought move so very, very slow, that I am almost in a state of perpetual warfare,&, alas! frequent defeat.

Her eyes are fascinating; at once expressive of good sense, tenderness, and a noble mind.

EDINBURGH, 14th August 1787

MY DEAR SIR,—Here am I. That is all I can tell you of that unaccountable being, myself. What I am doing no mortal can tell; what I am thinking, I myself cannot tell; what I am usually saying is not worth telling. The clock is just striking—one, two, three, four...twelve, forenoon;

[…] My life flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year. Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great pleasure; Sterne and Mackenzie—Tristram Shandy & the Man of Feeling were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind, but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour.

[…] This kind of life—the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period I first committed the sin of rhyme. You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself.

In my infant and boyish days, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity,& superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery

To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. I think a faithful account of what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment. I have, like Solomon, whose character, excepting in the trifling affair of wisdom, I sometimes think I resemble,—

23rd July 1787

MY DEAR AINSLIE,-There is one thing for which I set great store by you as a friend,& it is this, that I have not a friend upon earth, besides yourself, to whom I can talk nonsense without forfeiting some degree of his esteem. Now, to one like me, who never cares for speaking anything else but nonsense,such a friend as you is an invaluable treasure. I was never a rogue,but have been a fool all my life

My dear sir,—I write this on my tour through a country where savage streams tumble over savage mountains, thinly overspread with savage flocks, which sparingly support as savage inhabitants. My last stage was Inverary—to-morrow night's stage Dumbarton. I ought sooner to have answered your kind letter, but you know I am a man of many sins. R. B.

“She has a great deal of the elegance of a well-bred lady about her, with all the sweet simplicity of a country girl.”

[Monday, 21st Jan. 1788]

... I am a discontented ghost, a perturbed spirit. Clarinda, if ever you forget Sylvander, may you be happy, but he will be miserable. O what a fool I am in love! What an extraordinary prodigal of affection! Why are your sex called the tender sex, when I have never met with one who can repay me in passion? They are either not so rich in love as I am, or they are niggards where I am lavish.

“Saturday Noon [5th January].

Some days, some nights, nay, some hours like the "ten righteous persons in Sodom," save the rest of the vapid, tiresome, miserable months and years of life.
One of these hours my dear Clarinda blest me with yesternight.
One well-spent hour,
In such a tender circumstance for friends,
Is better than an age of common time!
THOMSON.”

“Thursday, Jan. 3, 1788.
You are right, my dear Clarinda: a friendly correspondence goes for nothing, except one writes his or her undisguised sentiments. Yours please me for their instrinsic merit, as well as because they are yours, which I assure you, is to me a high recommendation. ”

“Saturday Evening, Dec. 8th, 1787.
I can say with truth, Madam, that I never met with a person in my life whom I more anxiously wished to meet again than yourself. To-night I was to have had that very great pleasure; I was intoxicated with the idea, but an unlucky fall from a coach has so bruised one of my knees, that I can't stir my leg; so if I don't see you again, I shall not rest in my grave for chagrin.

Indeed, the situation of poets is generally such, to a proverb, as may, in some measure, palliate that prostitution of heart and talents they have at times been guilty of. I do not think that prodigality is, by any means, a necessary concomitant of a poetic turn, but I believe a careless, indolent inattention to economy is almost inseparable from it; then there must be in the heart of every bard of nature's making a