Latest Blog Posts — Page 3
Stoic and Little Hedonistic
The attitude of earning merit through work leaves little room for fun and pleasure, dimensions with which this character is unfamiliar. Pleasure is felt by always finding satisfaction in doing, but directed towards something (a goal) or someone. It is difficult to be aware of what increases the happiness of one without including the other, in fact this character is not clear about what makes her feel good. Contact with nature, silence, being with oneself, listening to music, dedicating time to oneself, are the possibilities that one sometimes allows oneself and that are closest to an idea of pleasure, but, on the other hand, the pleasure of endless movement, of spontaneity, and freedom of action and speech is hindered.
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warming my hands
on my teacup
morning frost
— Ogawa
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the lingering
scent of orchids
in a private room
— Bashō
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Very early in my life it was too late.
— The Lover, Marguerite Duras
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It’s been at least three decades since she told me that she wanted to disappear without leaving a trace, and I’m the only one who knows what she means. She never had in mind any sort of flight, a change of identity, the dream of making a new life somewhere else. And she never thought of suicide, repulsed by the idea that Rino would have anything to do with her body, and be forced to attend to the details. She meant something different: she wanted to vanish; she wanted every one of her cells to disappear, nothing of her ever to be found. And since I know her well, or at least I think I know her, I take it for granted that she has found a way to disappear, to leave not so much as a hair anywhere in this world …
She was expanding the concept of trace out of all proportion. She wanted not only to disappear herself, now, at the age of sixty-six, but also to eliminate the entire life that she had left behind.
— My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
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