travels in dreams

"Real painters understand with a brush in their hand" — Berthe Morisot Artwork: Berthe Morisot, Young Woman Holding a Dog in Her Arms (1892). Image: wikiart.org

All language is but a poor translation. – Franz Kafka

It's strange. I felt less lonely when I didn't know you. — Jean Paul Sarte, "The Flies"

Reborn, 1/2/58, p 167–168

— Susan Sontag Reborn, p 164–165, 31/12/57

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. This is the same sort of track I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. (p 5) I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void. (p 17) For me, at least, as I've written novels over many years, I just can't picture someone liking me on a personal level. Being disliked by someone, hated and despised, somehow seems more natural. (p 21) I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is to keep those few reasons nicely polished. (p 73) The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can't control its amount or quality. (p 77) Fortunately - these two disciplines - focus and and endurance are different from talent since they can be acquired and sharpened through training. (p 78) In any event, I'm happy I haven't stopped running all these years. The reason is, I like the novels I've written. (p 82) I'm not a human. I'm a piece of machinery. I don't need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead. (p 110) Run this long and of course it's going to be exhausting. But at this point being tired wasn't an issue. By this time the exhaustion was a status quo. My muscles were no longer a seething Revolutionary Tribunal and seemed to have given up on complaining. Nobody pounded the table anymore, nobody threw their cups. My muscles silently accepted this exhaustion now as a historical inevitability, an ineluctable outcome of the revolution. I had transformed into a being on autopilot, whose sole purpose was to rhythmically swing his arms back and forth, move his legs forward one step at a time. I didn't think about anything. I didn't feel anything. I realized that all of a sudden even physical pain was had all but vanished. Or maybe it was shoved into some unseen corner, like some ugly furniture you can't get rid of. (p 113) But just as our conciousness is a maze, so too is our body. Everywhere you turn there's darkness, and a blind spot. Everywhere you find silent hints, everywhere a surprise is waiting for you. (p 133) Being eighteen until you die means you die when you're eighteen. (p 139) Sometimes it strikes me as an intricate form of torture. In his book the triathlete Dave Scott wrote that of all the sports man has invented, cycling has got to be the most unpleasent of all.  I totally agree. (p 142)

Tennessee Williams

Giorgio Agamben 

Socrates