gottfried

Stand still.
I am standing still.
Obviously, you are not, otherwise I wouldn’t have told you to.
Just do it already.
I will as soon as you stand still.

Is it ready?
Yes. Here, take a look.
Wow. Great. Are you sure it’s supposed to look like this?
D’oh. I saw it on tv.

http://www.helnwein.com

ah, the pain

she did thrive on the moments
of diving in melancholy,
royal depression and ailments
when all to her was folly.
the world would gun her down
her dreams, her life - disaster,
and fate had cast a frown
upon this sorrow master.


Sometimes she couldn’t be sympathetic of other man’s suffering. It’s not like she didn’t care, but the spotlight in her mind was primarily set to fall on her own precious pate, and any outside competition was anything but fairly dealt with. She would always win herself. So what if he said he was low? He was just spoiled. Her pain was real.
She could feel it every night, she would weep a little, careful not to be seen, but then boast about it the first chance she had. The hugs would not stop the cascade of sobs and she would even occasionally wring a little tear in the corner of her eye to express her being deeply hurt. It would make her feel good.
She would then act bravely, proclaim her emotional independence and her stepping into a brave new world of stability and strength and feminism. She wouldn’t go so far as burning her bra or anything, but she would feel even better about herself.
Then, it would dawn on her. This whole self-empowering, self-sufficiency, autonomy thing…was it not getting to the core of her fragile being? Had it not rotted her frail, poor heart to numbness? Something must be wrong, she used to feel. She must have turned to stone. From all that pain she had kept inside. Yes. The pain. She could feel it again. But that was good. That meant she was sane. And normal.
But the pain…ah, it hurt. She would cry on her girlfriend’s shoulder once again about it. It would make her feel better.
What was it that he said? He was low? Ha! He doesn’t know what low IS.

of steak and man

tatăl meu despre a te ataşa de rock stars:

"e ca relaţia dintre un om şi friptura lui. friptura ţine la om, îl iubeşte?" :-<

the magus

so cruel a book. i would paste other fragments too, but they are rather graphic. i shall forever remember nicholas's night with julie, though. here's a small fragment on smiles.

'A figure appeared in the door. It was Conchis. He came to where I hung from the frame, and stood in front of me. I closed my eyes. The pain in my arms drowned everything else.
I made a sort of groaning-growling noise through the gag. I did not know myself what it really meant to say: whether that I was in pain or that if I ever saw him again I would tear him limb from limb.
"I come to tell you that you are now elect."
I shook my head violently from side to side.
"You have no choice."
I still shook my head, but more wearily.
He stared at me, with those eyes that seemed older than one man's lifetime, and a little gleam of sympathy came into his expression, as if after all he had put too much pressure on a very thin lever.
"Learn to smile, Nicholas. Learn to smile."
It came to me that he meant something different by "smile" than I did; that the irony, the humorlessness, the ruthlessness I had always noticed in his smiling was a quality he deliberately inserted; that for him the smile was something essentially cruel, because freedom is cruel, because the freedom that makes us at least partly responsible for what we are is cruel. So that the smile was not so much an _attitude_ to be taken to life as the _nature_ of the cruelty of life, a cruelty we cannot even choose to avoid, since it is human existence. He meant something far stranger by "Learn to smile" than a Smilesian "Grin and bear it." If anything, it meant "Learn to be cruel, learn to be dry, learn to survive."
He gave the smallest of bows, one full of irony, of the contempt implicit in incongruous courtesy, then went.
As soon as he had gone, Anton came in with Adam and the other blackshirts. They undid the handcuffs and got my arms down. A long black pole two of the blackshirts were carrying was unrolled and I saw a stretcher. They forced me to lie down on it and once again my wrists were handcuffed to the sides. I could neither fight them nor beg them to stop. So I lay passively, with my eyes shut, to avoid seeing them. I smelt ether, felt very faintly the jab of a needle; and I willed the oblivion to come fast.'

do read the book. it will be worth reading all its 720 pages.

smile.

How many smiles away is happiness? Are we there yet?
No, not there yet. Keep faking.

But it hurts, mummy. My cheeks are sinking in, they will soon be able to tell…
Come, sweetie. Don’t worry, mommy will take care of that. All you need to do is think happy thoughts. Here, think of… cotton candy.
Sticky, all-too-sweet, pink cotton candy?
Whatever you like, honey.
Mom! Look at me. Just once look at me! I hate cotton candy! Alright?
Now, don’t frown like that. People don’t like mean-looking kids. Be a nice little boy and show me your perfect pearly teeth. There you go… no, don’t grin like that!
I wish I had no mouth. No teeth. No lips. Just a hollow emptiness. I would be smiling AAAAL the time.
That’s nice, sweetie. Be a good boy, now. Take mommy’s hand.

Is happiness nice?
Sure it is. It’s all you’ve ever wanted.
Why is it so far, then?
What did I tell you about frowning? Better. We’re not far now.

What does it look like?
What does what look like?
Happiness.
I told you, like everything you’ve ever wanted.

All in one place?
Yes.
Neat.
Neat indeed.

Will daddy be there?
Huh?
Daddy, mommy. Will he be there?
If you want him to.
I do.

Mom?
Yes, sweetie.
It still hurts.
I’m sure it’s not far away.

hand me down

Someday they'll find your small town world
On a big town avenue
Gonna make you like the way they talk
When they're talking to you
Gonna make you break out of your shell
Cuz they tell you to
Gonna make you like the way they lie
Better than the truth
They'll tell you everthing
You wanted someone else to say
They're gonna break your heart.

(matchbox twenty)

what Alice did