Understanding the Narcissist
Narcissist Parents are hurt machines to their children: here
What the narcissist fears the most: here
Raised by a narcissist: here
The narcissist's mantra: "You made me do it"
Are you a narcissist host?: here
Flow
"In Thomas Mann's preface to The Short Novels of Dostoevsky, he writes that Nietzsche felt "all intelectual isolation and alienation from civil norm, all mental autonomy and ruthlessness, are related to the criminal's mode of life and afford an experiential insight into it. It seems to me that we can go on for ever farther and say that all creative originality, all artistry in the widest sense of the word, does just that. The French painter and sculpture Degas once made the remark that the artist must approach his work in the same frame of mind in which the criminal commits his deed." (Dial Press, 1945, p. xii). [Keith McMullen]
Taken from here.
Nothing is empty of sense...
"The Recognitions as a title I like perfectly because it implies the impossibility of escape from a (the) pattern". — William Gaddis
"Gwyon had climbed to the pines behind the town, pausing to breathe and smell the delicious freshness of manure, to realize how his senses had fallen into disuse under the abuses of cities".
[pg16]
[...]
"— Then how can you judge her crime, if you have never been so tempted?"
[pg24]
[...]
"And his father, withdrawing into his study with a deftness for absenting himself at crucial moments akin to that talent of the Lord, had become about as unattainable".
[pg35]
[...]
"Prolonged hours of wakefulness, when all he sought was sleep, might turn out to have been sleep when he waked: but most unsupportable was the sensational affair which went something like this: consciousness, it seemed, was a succession of separate particles, being carried along on the surface of the deep and steady unconscious flow of life, of time itself, and in fainting, the particles of consciousness simply stopped, and the rest flowed on, until they were restored: but this was stoppage, the entire disappearance of that deeper flow which left the particles of consciousness suspended, piling up, ready any instant to shatter with nothing to support them. Still, at such times everything was in order, of shape and color to mass and distance, of minutes accomplishing hours by accumulation just as the clock itself stayed on the table where it was if only because it had been accumulating there for so long: that was the reassurance of weight".
[pg51]
[...]
"It was done in black on a smooth gesso ground, on strong linen, a stark likeness which left its lines of completion to the eye of the beholder. It was this quality which appeared to upset Gwyon: once he'd seen it he was constantly curious, and would stand looking away from it, and back, completing it in his own mind and then looking again as though, in the momentary absence of his stare and the force of his own plastic imagination, it might have completed itself. Still each time he returned to it,it was slightly different than he remembered, intractably thwarting the completion he had managed himself.
— Why won't you finish it? he burst out finally.
— There's something about a ... an unfinished piece of work, a ... a thing like this where ... do you see? Where perfection is still possible? Because it's there all the time, all the time you work trying to uncover it. Wyatt caught a hand before him and gripped it as his father's were gripped behind the back turned to him. — Because it's there ..., he repeated."
[pg57]
Marina, by T. S. Eliot
Quis hic locus, quae regio, quae mundi plaga? *
What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.
Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death
Death
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning
Death
Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning
Death
Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning
Death
Are become insubstantial, reduced by a wind,
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place
A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog
By this grace dissolved in place
What is this face, less clear and clearer
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger—
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.
The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger—
Given or lent? more distant than stars and nearer than the eye
Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet
Under sleep, where all the waters meet.
Bowsprit cracked with ice and paint cracked with heat.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
I made this, I have forgotten
And remember.
The rigging weak and the canvas rotten
Between one June and another September.
Made this unknowing, half conscious, unknown, my own.
The garboard strake leaks, the seams need caulking.
This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.
And woodthrush calling through the fog
My daughter.
*“What place is this, what region, what area of the world?”
Marina, filha do rei Antiochus, na peça Péricles, de Shakespeare
The Life Poetic || T.S Eliot || Marina
Nuclear, yes please
"The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice."
Here
Why I changed my mind about nuclear power | Michael Shellenberger | TEDxBerlin
Morning stars and fallen angels — coisas do Diabo
"— Lucifer is the morning star, he began hopefully, — Father says...
— Father says! ... her voice cut him through. — Lucifer was the archangel who refused to serve Our Lord. To sin is to falsify something in the Divine Order, and that is what Lucifer did. His name means Bringer of Light but he was not satisfied to bring the light of Our Lord to man, he tried to steal the power of Our Lord and to bring his own light to man. He tried to become original, she pronounced malignantly, shaping that word round the whole structure of damnation, repeating it, crumpling the drawing of the robin in her hand, — original, to steal Our Lord's authority, to command his own destiny, to bear his own light! That is why Satan is The Fallen Angel, for he rebelled when he tried to emulate Our Lord Jesus. And he won his own domain, didn't he. Didn't he! And his own light is the light of the fires of Hell! Is that what you want? Is that what you want?"
The Recognitions, William Gaddis [pg 34]
 |
| Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders |
"— Se me vens ver, porque não me saudaste, antigo cobrador de impostos? — perguntou Woland num tom severo.
— Porque não desejo a tua saúde — respondeu insolentemente o outro.
— Mas há uma coisa com que tens de resignar-te — objectou Woland, e um sorriso irónico desenhou-se-lhe na boca. — Mal tu surgiste no telhado, cometeste logo um absurdo, e eu digo-te onde é que está esse absurdo: está no teu tom. Dizes as palavras como se não reconhecesses a existência das sombras e do mal. Não quererás ter a bondade de pensar nesta questão: de que serviria o teu bem se não existisse o mal, e que aspecto teria a terra se dela desaparecessem as sombras? Pois as sombras são produzidas pelos objectos e pelas pessoas. Aqui está a sombra da minha espada. Mas há também as sombras das árvores e de todos os seres vivos. Não quererás tu despir todo o globo terrestre, varrendo da sua superfície todas as árvores e tudo o que é vivo, por causa da tua fantasia de te deleitares com a luz pura? És um tolo."
Margarita e o Mestre, Mikhail Bulgákov [pg 327]
 |
| Jorge de Burgos, The Name of the Rose |
Unguided Tour
"This staunchless wound, the great longing for another place.
To make this place another.
In a mosque at Damietta stands a column that, if you lick it until your tongue bleeds, will cure you of restlessness. It must bleed.
A curious word, wanderlust. I'm ready to go."
Unguided Tour, Susan Sontag
Nature VS Nurture
So... What is acceptable and what is respectable, is a highly arbitrary phenomenon in our society."
Também aqui
"Estou à espera de morrer e penso que será uma experiência interessante."
RIP George Steiner
Porquê a Índia?
"É a próxima grande explosão cultural. Tive imensos alunos vindos da China e da Índia. Os chineses dizem sempre que sim e aprendem tudo de memória — o que para mim é algo extremamente benéfico. Mas os indianos são criativos. Dizem que não e vão à procura da sua própria opinião. Estou muito otimista em relação ao futuro da ciência, da arte, da língua e da filosofia indianas."
Mais, aqui
Brexit is a collective English mental breakdown
Um excelente artigo.
"English people living on dreams of empire never learned to see others as equals."
"On June 23rd, 2016, the English rejected that offer and opted to continue living the fiction of splendid isolation that sustained the UK and the British empire before it, and to continue denying the Scots and the Irish a will of their own. Any recovery from this collective mental breakdown will involve treating it in the light of its deep historical causes. Not until there is a separate English parliament, giving England at last the distinctive political identity it has shunned for 300 years, will the delusions that led the country to Brexit finally be dissipated by contact with reality. Perhaps then, with their psychosis healed, the English will apply to rejoin the EU."
Mais, aqui
Neoliberalism – An economic ideology
This Is Neoliberalism ▶︎ Introducing the Invisible Ideology (Part 1)
Neoliberalism – An economic ideology that exists within the framework of capitalism
“Marriage is not a house or even a tent…”
“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other,”
Rainer Maria Rilke
HABITATION
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent
it is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn
the edge of the receding glacier
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
we are learning to make fire
Margaret Atwood
The critical role of energy in foundational infrastructure
"[...] the great economic revolutions in history are infrastructure revolutions, and what makes the great infrastructure revolutions transformational is the convergence of new communications media with new energy regimes. Every energy revolution in history has been accompanied by its own unique communications revolution. Energy revolutions change the temporal and spatial reach of society and make possible more complex living arrangements, all of which require new communication media to manage and coordinate the new opportunities. Try to imagine organizing the production and distribution complexities of a steam-powered urban industrial revolution without cheap and quick steam-powered printing and the telegraph, or organizing the managerial complexities of an oil, auto, and suburban mass-consumer culture without centralized electricity and especially telephone communication, radio and television."
Zero Marginal Cost Society, Jeremy Rifkin [pg 236]
