anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
Carl Sagan, Contact (1985)
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
being alive is like a whole fucking thing dude ive only been here 23 years and can only really remember like 10 of those years at most and yet im literally immobilized by fear and anxiety i have no clue what i want and yet i am mad at myself for not moving fast enough? like towards what? for who? who is even going to hand me a medal for living correctly? like what would happen if i was just content but like no one knew and i told no one. would that still count? i think it would
how can it be that whatever exists
can only exist in one way,
an awful situation, for there's no escaping yourself,
no pause, no transformation?
Wisława Szymborska, from “Interview with a Child,” Poems New and Collected: 1957 - 1997
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
And I — soft, weak, obscene, digesting, juggling with dismal thoughts — I, too, was In the way. Fortunately, I didn’t feel it, although I realized it, but I was uncomfortable because I was afraid of feeling it (even now I am afraid — afraid that it might catch me behind my head and lift me up like a wave). I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been In the way. In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and clean as teeth, it would have been In the way: I was In the way for eternity.
Jean-Paul Sartre, from Nausea
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
I tell you, pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell . . . Pain! Pain and pleasure – they are for us, only so long as we wriggle in the dust.
H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
I wanted . . . out of defiance, to play with the absurdity of the world.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (via anenlighteningellipses)
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
[But why can’t I explain what I see. To anyone.] There: I am quietly slipping into the water’s depths, towards fear.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
stoicremains-deactivated2017102
…Existentialism: the responsibility of the individual to take hold of his or herself in a way which ensures really existing, rather than sleepwalking through life.
Steven Earnshaw (via whyallcaps)
A blind fate, a vast pitiless mechanism, seemed to cut and shape the fabric of existence.
H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
I wanted . . . out of defiance, to play with the absurdity of the world.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
I tell you, pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell . . . Pain! Pain and pleasure -- they are for us, only so long as we wriggle in the dust . . .
H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
So this is Nausea: this blinding evidence? I have scratched my head over it. I've written about it. Now I know: I exist — the world exists — and I know that the world exists. That’s all. It makes no difference to me. It’s strange that everything makes so little difference to me: it frightens me.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (via anenlighteningellipses)
There is no better.
Only (for a short space)
the night sky like
a quarantine that sets you
apart from your task.
Only (softly, fiercely)
the stars shining. Here,
in the room, in the bedroom.
Saying I was brave, I resisted,
I set myself on fire.
Louise Glück, from “Stars”, The Seven Ages
The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.
Graham Greene, The End of the Affair