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I've been reading Simone Weil and I'm glad I found this book when I did. I really needed it. I've been feeling weighed down by the state of the world and family tragedies and dramas. But this book has helped to put some things back into perspective.
Here are some choice excerpts:
- "The tendency to spread evil beyond oneself: I still have it! Beings and things are not sacred enough to me. May I never sully anything even though I be utterly transformed into mud. To sully nothing, even in thought. Even in my worst moments I would not destroy a Greek statue or a fresco by Giotto. Why anything else then? Why, for example, a moment in the life of a human being who could have been happy for that moment?"
- "A king can pay out only imaginary rewards most of the time, or he would be insolvent. It is the same with religion at a certain level. Instead of receiving the smile of Louis XIV, we invent a god who smiles on us."
- "The future is a filler of void places. Sometimes the past also plays this part ('I used to be,' 'I once did this or that...'). But there are other cases when affliction makes the thought of happiness intolerable; then in robs the sufferer of his past.... The past and the future hinder the wholesome effect of affliction by providing an unlimited field for imaginary elevation. That is why the renunciation of the past and future is the first of all renunciations."
-"A person who is passionately fond of music may quite well be a perverted person–but I should find it hard to believe this of anyone who thirsted for Gregorian chanting."
- "It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves. It is to seek pleasures in friendships, and pleasures which are not deserved. It is something which corrupts even more than love. You would sell your soul for friendship. // Learn to thrust friendship aside, or rather the dream of friendship. To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it."
-"Suffering is nothing, apart from the relationship between the past and the future, but what is more real for man than this relationship? It is reality itself. // The future. We go on thinking it will come until the moment when we think it will never come."
-"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer."
-"To love our neighbor as ourselves does not mean that we should love all people equally, for I do not have an equal love for all modes of existence of myself. Nor does it mean that we should never make them suffer, for I do not refuse to make myself suffer. But we should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe."
-"Power (and money, power's master key) is a means at its purest. For that very reason it is the supreme end for all those who have not understood."
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I want to thank Liv for giving me my favourite book.
Clarice has been my favourite author since I was 14, reading what she writes always felt like reading my thoughts and beliefs about life on a page as if they had been scooped out of my brain and elegantly placed in a book.
This is the only text I had never read and known to be her most regarded work The Passion According to G.H. takes the status of a masterpiece In the Brasilian Literature scenario. I wanted to make sure to read it when I felt ready, ready to say goodbye to Clarice, as I turned 21 one of my best friends gifted me this book and I knew it was time.
The history is simple, a woman is cleaning her house, and she finds a drawing, a roach and God. From there Clarice takes your hand and leads you into the journey of finding meaning.
According to Aristotle, the end of all human actions resides in the search for happiness. This book describes that in the most genius way. Heaven and hell are portrayed as being a place on earth, a place on us. I doubt that two people can read this book and tell you the same history, it is highly subjective you can take away from it whatever exists in your mind.
My biggest takeaway was that hell and even are inside of us, by wishing for things you don't have you must go through war to achieve them, war is hell. By wishing for things that you already have (like seeing your friends on the weekend, talking to your grandparents, baking a cake) you find heaven. Heaven is in the simple, it is in the recognition that you were given more than what you could have asked for. Love is the realization of getting someone you wished for through passion, it is tedious, complete and beautiful. You can find content in love, and you no longer wish.
That is what I read, but please don't let my blurry vision take you down a path. I am sure that if you read it your life and experiences would lead you to many different conclusions.
This is a book that I would love to give to everyone I know and ask them what it is about.
That is the beauty and geniality of Clarice.
"Humility is much more than a feeling, it is reality seen with a minimum of good sense".
Jun 8, 2024
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by C.S. Lewis. No contest. Thoughts at the link. Quoted below:
"I read this years ago and did not grasp it. But I felt I’d just read Lewis’ most mature artistic work. Reading it as the person I am now, Till We Have Faces made me ache. Ache with beauty. Ache with grief. Ache with love. Ache with awe.
Lewis drew me deep into the heart of the protagonist where I felt her every joy and enumerable sorrows. Many pages were read through tears. This is a beautiful retelling of the Greek tragedy of Cupid and Psyche from the sister’s point of view. And through Orual’s eyes, Lewis crafts a deep, rich meditation on the nature of love, holiness, man, and gods.
For Orual, holiness is known to her as darkness and the stench of blood. For me, holiness is this book."
Dec 3, 2024
Love is not an exchange, love is an art!!!!!
The Art of Loving gives insaaanee insight into how we undervalue love & how we [incorrectly] navigate relationships.
Lots of hard pills to swallow w/ Fromm’s theories but I find myself agreeing with most :o
one of my fav works ever 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Sep 4, 2024
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No screen Sundays. If I want to listen to music its CDs or radio. If I want to watch a movie, no I don’t. If I want to see a friend, I will make plans with them on Friday or Saturday to meet up. As a result, I read more, write more, and sit with questions like “did Citizen Kane‘s 50 year winning streak in the Sight and Sound critics choice survey end in 2012 or 2022? When did Stephen Merritt come out? Whats the etymology of Whitsun?“
This is something that I have practiced off and on for many years but I’ve been doing it every week since December and I love the way that it just allows me one day of true freedom and rest.
Jan 22, 2025
Mar 3, 2025
My calendar this year has 52 of these week at a glance pages but I don’t think that way. So, I've been inspired by Ross Gay’s Book of Delighs to start recording the little moments and sensations that bring me joy throughout the day. An analog pi.fyi, if you will.
heres some of what I have so far:
- Waking up to the sound of my upstairs neighbor‘s footstep. It sounded nostalgic. Felt like company.
- Strawberry jam
- feeling tender for strangers: their lips, nail colors, their small wrists. Thinking of all the lives we hold gently.
- A young girl bought an LP at the bookstore just before I left. She stroked its cover with love
- Green tiles —the mint shade always makes me think of Jancie
- Charlie’s little bop and punch dancing to some German language punk
- lunch with Katherine, curry Brussels sprouts
- small talk at the photo studio. The photographer's brother was named after their dad, stole his identity, bought jet skis.
Jan 13, 2025