may the day of my birth perish,
and the night it was said, "a boy is born!"
that day - may it turn to darkness;
may god above not care about it;
may no light shine upon it.
may darkness and deep shadow claim it once more;
may a cloud settle over it;
may blackness overwhelm its light.
that night - may thick darkness seize it;
may it not be included among the days of the year nor be entered in any of the months.
may that night be barren;
may no shout of joy be heard in it.
may those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse leviathan.
may its morning stars become dark;
may it wait for daylight in vain and not see the first rays of dawn,
for it did not shut the doors of the womb on me to hide trouble from my eyes.
why did i not perish at birth, and die as i came from the womb?
why were there knees to receive me and breasts that i might be nursed?
for now i would be lying down in peace;
i would be asleep and at rest with kings and counselors of the earth,
who build for themselves places now lying in ruins,
with rulers who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
or why was i not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child
like an infant who never saw the light of day?
there the wicked cease from turmoil,
and there the weary are at rest.
captives also enjoy their ease;
they no longer hear the slave driver's shout.
the small and the great are there and the slave is freed from his master.
why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul,
to those who long for death that does not come,
who search for it more than for hidden treasure,
who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave?
why is life given to a man whose way is hidden,
whom god has hedged in?
for sighing comes to me instead of food;
my groans pour out like water.
what i feared has come upon me;
what i dreaded has happened to me.
i have no peace, no quietness; i have no rest,
but only turmoil.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
INSOMNIAC by sylvia plath
The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole-
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments - the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy roses that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue-
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of gray mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole-
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments - the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy roses that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue-
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of gray mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus
"it is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning."
"...killing yourself amounts to confessing...that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it."
"one day the 'why' arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement. "begins'- this is important. weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. it awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. what follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. at the end of the awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery."
"the world evades us because it becomes itself again."
"men, too, secrete the inhuman. at certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspects of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them."
"in reality there is no experience of death. properly speaking, nothing has been but what has been lived and made conscious."
"is one to die voluntarily or to hope in spite of everything?"
"so that science was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art."
"man stands face to face with the irrational. he feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. the absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."
"the absurd is essentially a divorce. it lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation."
"absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in their presence together."
"absurd: a confrontation and an unceasing struggle."
"[that] struggle implies a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest). everything that destroys, conjures away, or exorcises these requirements (and to begin with consent which overthrows divorce) ruins the absurd and devaluates the attitude that may then be proposed. the absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to."
"a man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it."
"all existential philosophies without exception suggest escape. through an odd reasoning, starting out from the absurd over the ruins of reason, in a closed universe limited to the human, they deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them. that forced hope is religious in all of them."
"the only true solution...is precisely where human judgment sees no solution. otherwise, what need would we have of God? we turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. as for the possible men suffice."
"the more hideous his face, the more he asserts his power. his greatness is his incoherence. his proof is his inhumanity" - on God
"to Chestov reason is useless but there is something beyond reason. to an absurd mind reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reason."
the absurd man "recognizes the struggle, does not absolutely scorn reason, and admits the irrational...he knows...there is no further place for hope."
"the absurd is sin without God"
"everything considered, a determined soul will always manage."
"they always lay claim to the eternal, and it is solely in this that they take the leap."
"in truth the way matters but little; the will to arrive suffices."
"sin is not so much knowing as wanting to know."
'the danger, on the contrary, lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap. being able to remain on that dizzying crest-that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge."
"he wants to find out if he can live without appeal"
"[life] will be lived better if it has no meaning."
"it is a constant confrontation between man and his obscurity"
"it is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope."
"that revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the registration that ought to accompany it....that revolt gives life its value"
"...killing yourself amounts to confessing...that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it."
"one day the 'why' arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement. "begins'- this is important. weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. it awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. what follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. at the end of the awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery."
"the world evades us because it becomes itself again."
"men, too, secrete the inhuman. at certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspects of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them."
"in reality there is no experience of death. properly speaking, nothing has been but what has been lived and made conscious."
"is one to die voluntarily or to hope in spite of everything?"
"so that science was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art."
"man stands face to face with the irrational. he feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. the absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."
"the absurd is essentially a divorce. it lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation."
"absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in their presence together."
"absurd: a confrontation and an unceasing struggle."
"[that] struggle implies a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest). everything that destroys, conjures away, or exorcises these requirements (and to begin with consent which overthrows divorce) ruins the absurd and devaluates the attitude that may then be proposed. the absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to."
"a man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it."
"all existential philosophies without exception suggest escape. through an odd reasoning, starting out from the absurd over the ruins of reason, in a closed universe limited to the human, they deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them. that forced hope is religious in all of them."
"the only true solution...is precisely where human judgment sees no solution. otherwise, what need would we have of God? we turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. as for the possible men suffice."
"the more hideous his face, the more he asserts his power. his greatness is his incoherence. his proof is his inhumanity" - on God
"to Chestov reason is useless but there is something beyond reason. to an absurd mind reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reason."
the absurd man "recognizes the struggle, does not absolutely scorn reason, and admits the irrational...he knows...there is no further place for hope."
"the absurd is sin without God"
"everything considered, a determined soul will always manage."
"they always lay claim to the eternal, and it is solely in this that they take the leap."
"in truth the way matters but little; the will to arrive suffices."
"sin is not so much knowing as wanting to know."
'the danger, on the contrary, lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap. being able to remain on that dizzying crest-that is integrity and the rest is subterfuge."
"he wants to find out if he can live without appeal"
"[life] will be lived better if it has no meaning."
"it is a constant confrontation between man and his obscurity"
"it is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope."
"that revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the registration that ought to accompany it....that revolt gives life its value"
Saturday, March 27, 2010
sylvia's poetry
"i may never be happy, but tonight i am content."
"i love people. everybody. i love them, i think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. my love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. i would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. but i am not omniscient. i have to live my life, and it is the only one i'll ever have. and you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time..."
"this is i, i thought, the american virgin, dressed to seduce."
"i have too much conscience injected in me to break customs without disastrous effects"
"before i give my body, i must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. and you weren't having any of those.-"
"if only i can find him...the man who will be intelligent, yet physically magnetic and personable. if i can offer that combination, why shouldn't i expect it in a man?-"
"something in me wants more. i can't rest."
"can you understand? someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little?...i love life. but it is hard."
"Gold leaves shiver
In this crack of time;
Yelllow flickers
In the shrill clear sun;
Light pirouettes
In ballet dress,
White blue above
Leaps the sheer sky.
Gold leaves dangle
In the wind.
Gold threads snap.
In giddy whirls
And sweeps of fancy
Sunlit leaves plane down.
Lisping along the street
In dry and deathless dance
The leaves on slipshod feet
Advance.
Breathless,
Restless,
Gold leaves twirl,
Spiral,
Circle,
Curl.
Brief gold glitters
In the gutters;
Flares and flashes,
Husky rushes.
Brisk wind hushes
hushes
hushes
And in that moment,
Silent, cold,
Across the lawn,
Dull pools of gold."
"God, i scream for time to let go, to write, to think."
"such is the resiliency of man that he can become fascinated by ugliness which surrounds him everywhere and wish to transform it by his art into something clinging and haunting in it's lovely desolation."
"but you will never take a walk. you will never be alone. and you hate him because he has deprived you of that: --walks and aloneness. and you hate him because he is a boy."
"we become blunt and callous and blissfully passive as each day adds another drop to the stagnant well of our years."
"aloneness and selfness are too important to betray for company."
"being born a woman is my awful tragedy."
"inescapable femininity"
"i want to talk to everybody i can as deeply as i can. i want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night..."
"you live everyday in the dark cramped prison you have made for yourself."
"i envy the man his physical freedom to lead a double life - his career and his sexual, family life."
Friday, December 25, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
memorable quotes
-what are you doing?
"not shit"
"the excitement is unparalleled"
"how do you know a girl likes you? throw her underwear at the ceiling and if it sticks, she likes you"
would it have been any more meaningful if, say we had been a couple?
i honestly don't believe so.
it would have been the same amount, but a different meaning.
i think this is still something significunt
because it was young and rash and full of independence
but we still felt intensely
or maybe just me
i dream of you
all the fucking time
and it's hilariously the same but a different situation:
"you're going to stay this time, right? you're not going to die?"
"no, i'm staying this time."
life is a dream
death is real
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