It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. Two people who were once very close can become strangers. You tried to change, didn’t you? You tried but you can’t make homes out of human beings.
I think when we’re out in the world and we have to talk to people, we edit ourselves. As honest as we may be as humans. When we’re out here, we’re all kind of wearing mirrors on our faces. You know, constantly reacting to how to react to the people around you. And I think when you’re alone for a long enough time, you can feel a lot more peace.
By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before.
In poetry land there’s a myth that art is tainted by popularity: the more eyes see it, the more corrupt it becomes. Said myth is outdated and nonsensical, but survives because it’s a nice stunt double for artistic integrity. It’s also great for cognitive dissonance: if no one’s reading poetry, it helps to think we never wanted them to. AND it justifies our laziness in connecting with non-poets. Hooray! But um… The myth is rank, you guys. It creates disdain for the public, shames us for our desires to communicate, and imprisons us in insular poetry land… So let’s lose that thing; it’s embarrassing. Musicians has an audience in part because it wants one. It appreciates, respects, and engages the public. We should, too. Similarly… Like many poets, beginning songwriters can’t get on the cover of Rolling Stone, or appear on The Daily Show. But they don’t give up and play for one another…They play local venues, partner with local companies, create stories that make the local news. They work with nonprofits, tour town to town, make documentaries. They want to be in conversation with the public. This requires exploration, innovation, and risk-taking, and they do it.
People are not taught to be really virtuous, but to behave properly. We are wicked because we are frightfully self-conscious. We are afraid to tell the truth to ourselves. How can one be serious with the world when the world itself encourages a species of ignorance out of control. Extreme situations don’t change us, they reveal us.
“I just thought it was so romantic—the idea that you don’t need to be loved in return in order to love something or someone. Love can come from you. It doesn’t have to be reciprocal. People love their cars. People love all kinds of things, and they really love them. And we don’t really value that kind of love because it’s not a real, reciprocal kind of love, but it’s real love to them…”
The heretic is one who forsakes the truth by not seeking decent reasons for believing it. A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer.
It’s not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What’s more difficult is to identify with someone you don’t see, who’s very far away, who’s a different color, who eats a different kind of food. And you hold an absence at your center as if it were your life, a way of leaving no space for death, of pushing back forgetfulness, of never letting oneself be surprised by the abyss. Of never becoming resigned, consoled, and never turning over in bed to face the wall, as if nothing had happened!
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
Ogni vita è un’enciclopedia, una biblioteca, un’inventario d’oggetti, un campionario di stili, dove tutto può essere continuamente rimescolato e riordinato in tutti i modi possibili. M’abbandono all’adorabile viaggio: leggere, vivere dove guidano le parole.
Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem. Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
For us who live in cities Nature is not natural. Nature is supernatural. Just as monks watched and strove to get a glimpse of heaven, so we watch and strive to get a glimpse of earth. It is as if men had cake and wine every day but were sometimes allowed common bread.