Theaspora

“The earth became a dream; I myself had become an inward being, and I walked as in an inward world. Everything outside me faded to obscurity, and all I had understood till now was unintelligible. I fell away from the surface, down into the depths, which I recognized then to be all that was good. What we understand and love understands and love us also.”

‘Listen up, pal, the moon is way up in the sky. Aren’t you scared? The helplessness that comes from nature. That moonlight, think about it, that moonlight paler than a corpse’s face, so silent and far away, that moonlight witnessed the cries of the first monsters to walk the earth, surveyed the peaceful waters after the deluges and the floods, illuminated centuries of nights and went out at dawns throughout centuries…Think about it, my friend, that moonlight will be the same tranquil ghost when the last traces of your great-grandsons’ grandsons no longer exist. Prostrate yourself before it. You’ve shown up for an instant and it is forever. Don’t you suffer, pal? I…I myself can’t stand it. It hits me right here, in the center of my heart, having to die one day and, thousands of centuries later, undistinguished in the humus, eyeless for all eternity. I, I!, for all eternity… and the indifferent, triumphant moon, its pale hands outstretched over new men, new things, different beings. And I Dead!“–I took a deep breath. ‘Think about it, my friend. it’s shining over the cemetery right now. The cemetery, where all lie sleeping who once were and never more shall be. There, where the slightest whisper makes the living shudder in terror and where the tranquility of the stars muffles our cries and brings terror to our eyes. There, where there are neither tears nor thoughts to express the profound misery of coming to an end.’

Into the inner world, where reason and madness mingle with hope and memory and endlessly give birth to nightmare and to dream; down into the providence of the psychiatrist and the artist, from whence spring the lunatic's fancy and the work of art. It is a dangerous region even for the artist, and his tragedy lies in the fact that in order to tap the fluid fire of inspiration, he must perpetually descend and reencounter not only the ghosts of his former selves, but all of the unconquered anguish of his living.

“We run out of things to tell each other. We share second- and even third-tier stories we’d never bother other people with. Those minutiae calcify into the bones of our intimacy.”

[The two lovers] were rare, rarity in the air. They felt rare, not part of the thousand people wandering the streets. The two of them were sometimes conspiratorial, they had a secret life because no one would understand them. And also because the rare ones are persecuted by the people who don't tolerate the insulting offense of those who are different. They hid their love so as not to wound the eyes of others with envy. So as not to wound them with a spark too luminous for the eyes.