In the summer/Ooh, I love her/Like no other/She's my mother
In the summer (Loon Lake)
Tuesday 20 November 2012
Was Is Am Are
Saying you are more than the sum of your past actions at any point of life is like saying the contents of a used condom is 'life'. Everything has potential, or in the words of Sartre (on talking about these kinds of people) - "Circumstances have been against me. What I've been and done doesn't show my true worth...there remains within me, unused and quite viable, a host of propensities, inclinations, possibilities, that one wouldn't guess from the mere series of things I've done". Such self deception is almost amusing. In stating humans are what they have actually done doesn't neglect their potential to be more but rather, is "optimistically tough" within an unforgiving rational context (which is the best kind if you want my opinion). We need to value reality more, because it is reality that affects others and our futures, and it is reality that spurs onwards. This idea "prompts people to understand that reality alone is what counts, that dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more than to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations. In other words, to define him negatively and not positively".
I love rereading Sartre's essays every once in a while. Touch me, I give you consent (Existentialism and Human Emotion).
I love rereading Sartre's essays every once in a while. Touch me, I give you consent (Existentialism and Human Emotion).
Internal nature.
Tell me, tell me.
Do you ever find yourself overwhelmed while walking in the day? Perhaps it is the music or lack thereof, perhaps it is the taste of air, perhaps it is the warmth of the blood that travels through your bones; whatever your source of crippling emotion - the moment you are able to simply observe the world outside of yourself is when you are able to appreciate the incredulity of all existence. I have always understood the human affinity with nature as a natural component of being a part of nature and as everything is concerned with itself, this seemed only ...natural. Yet we have constructed opposing worlds we brand as 'man-made' but children remain drawn to mud and seashells over plastic pebbles and the elderly walk as the sun rises and thumbs only get greener and I never feel more comforted than when I am doing simply nothing in my backyard. We try to contain nature in zoos, gardens and photographs but if there were any subject humans have tried to conquer, nature would be our greatest rivalry. We cannot extinguish the source of life without falling into destruction ourselves. So the next time when you are walking, and you decide to slow and realise in what wonderment you are a part of, let oxygen currents charge your lungs and breathe the way bodies do and hearts need.
Do you ever find yourself overwhelmed while walking in the day? Perhaps it is the music or lack thereof, perhaps it is the taste of air, perhaps it is the warmth of the blood that travels through your bones; whatever your source of crippling emotion - the moment you are able to simply observe the world outside of yourself is when you are able to appreciate the incredulity of all existence. I have always understood the human affinity with nature as a natural component of being a part of nature and as everything is concerned with itself, this seemed only ...natural. Yet we have constructed opposing worlds we brand as 'man-made' but children remain drawn to mud and seashells over plastic pebbles and the elderly walk as the sun rises and thumbs only get greener and I never feel more comforted than when I am doing simply nothing in my backyard. We try to contain nature in zoos, gardens and photographs but if there were any subject humans have tried to conquer, nature would be our greatest rivalry. We cannot extinguish the source of life without falling into destruction ourselves. So the next time when you are walking, and you decide to slow and realise in what wonderment you are a part of, let oxygen currents charge your lungs and breathe the way bodies do and hearts need.
Thursday 15 November 2012
For the love of Beauvoir.
“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself”
“In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.”
“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”
“All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception.”
“Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.”
“No one would take me just as I was, no one loved me; I shall love myself enough, I thought, to make up for this abandonment by everyone. Formerly, I had been quite satisfied with myself, but I had taken very little trouble to increase my self-knowledge; from now on, I would stand outside myself, watch over and observe myself; in my diary I had long conversations with myself. I was entering a world whose newness stunned me. I learned to distinguish between distress and melancholy, lack of emotion and serenity; I learned to recognize the hesitations of the heart, and its ecstasies, the splendor of great renunciations, and the subterranean murmurings of hope. I entered into exalted trances, as on those evenings when I used to gaze upon the sky full of moving clouds behind the distant blue of the hills; I was both the landscape and its beholder: I existed only through myself, and for myself… My path was clearly marked: I had to perfect, enrich and express myself in a work of art that would help others to live.”
“In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.”
“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”
“All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception.”
“Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.”
“No one would take me just as I was, no one loved me; I shall love myself enough, I thought, to make up for this abandonment by everyone. Formerly, I had been quite satisfied with myself, but I had taken very little trouble to increase my self-knowledge; from now on, I would stand outside myself, watch over and observe myself; in my diary I had long conversations with myself. I was entering a world whose newness stunned me. I learned to distinguish between distress and melancholy, lack of emotion and serenity; I learned to recognize the hesitations of the heart, and its ecstasies, the splendor of great renunciations, and the subterranean murmurings of hope. I entered into exalted trances, as on those evenings when I used to gaze upon the sky full of moving clouds behind the distant blue of the hills; I was both the landscape and its beholder: I existed only through myself, and for myself… My path was clearly marked: I had to perfect, enrich and express myself in a work of art that would help others to live.”
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