She could speak, of course, but had little to say. No sooner do I succeed in persuading her to speak than she slips through my fingers.
*
I get the impression that her life was one long meditation about nothingness.
— Lispector, The Hour of the Star (tr. G. Pontiero)
Posted in Lispector
To begin a fiction seems to me an act of great daring. What temerity – to write, and a fiction! The temerity of inventiveness! Perhaps I am like those who distrust fiction writers who would usurp the place of God. But then I remember that certain fictional works are more like a destruction than a creation: the world is pared down, ‘reduced’ as is said in phenomenology, and now in such a way that the author is the opposite of God.
— Spurious
Posted in Spurious
And so they all, each in his own way, reflectingly or unreflectingly, go on with their daily lives; everything seems to take its accustomed course, for indeed, even in desperate situations where everything hangs in the balance, one goes on living as though nothing were wrong.
— Goethe, Elective Affinities (quoted in Handke’s The Left-Handed Woman)
My screen starts to squirm and all the words I’ve written on it form cones that reach out to me. I fight them off and now I’m engaged in a violent struggle with my screen, my desk, my body and my chair.
Posted in Dreams
The sensation of the passing of time has always been vivid for me, and I have been attracted by it just as others are allured by dizzying heights or by water.
— Guy Debord (via here)
Posted in Spurious
Deep inside me there’s a perpetual seething, like the bottom of a geyser, and I keep hoping that things will come to an eruption once and for all, so that I can turn into a different person.
*
Perhaps you regard this thinking about myself as a waste of time – but how can I be a logician before I’m a human being? Far the most important thing is to settle accounts with myself!
*
My thoughts are tired. I am not seeing things freshly, but rather in a pedestrian, lifeless way. It is as if a flame had gone out and I must wait until it starts to burn again by itself.
— Wittgenstein (via here)
Posted in Spurious, Wittgenstein
I’m nothing but the exterior of my body: skin, hair, nails, eyes. I go to the shops with a weightless feeling, being hollow inside. I head for the city hall on some obscure mission, with shopping bags I find hard to carry, and when I reach the door I crumple and wake up.
Posted in Dreams
I’m drinking wine from a cracked glass. The wine runs down my arm and my legs. I vomit, pour more wine in the glass, drink, vomit, etc.
Posted in Dreams
I dream that I’m drifting between wakefulness and sleep, which in fact I am. I tell myself off for not being able to sleep, try the yogic technique of visualising a spiral and thereby wake myself up.
Posted in Dreams
I dream that I awake to find all the objects and fixtures in my room rearranged in the manner of various rooms I’ve lived in. I don’t know where I am. But this doesn’t disconcert me, in fact it’s almost reassuring, and nicer than waking up in my actual room. I go with the dream, prolonging it.
Posted in Dreams
