Conversations in a Dream
I found Life after exiting a portal in the air. The thing struck me oddly and so I tried to return back through the portal, but by this time, it had already disappeared. It seemed the only to do was continue on. I met there two friends - Octavia and Shelli, who wanted to help me on my way. To this I agreed, for I saw at once that Life would be a venture best not made alone.
*
Octavia: Life is like a brightening cloud - we stand in the billowy center of this cumulous and slowly discover the things around us. They take shape and take on a lustre suddenly new - suddenly we notice the figures around us in their genuine outlines. And yet it never dawned on us before that these figures had such outlines, no, we only saw the colours of them and let them have the shapes we gave them in our minds.
*
Shelli: There was a time on earth when the mornings sang. Those days one could smell oneself as in a earthly womb, overgrown and rich with everything real. In fact, nothing was unreal - that is the essential thing to remember about this time. There was never a question, never a doubt about the things given to your through your senses and your mind. It all flourished before you, and you simply could not help but be enraptured by it.
Jackie: But where has that time gone?
Shelli: Why ask - 'where was that time gone?' Isn't it enough to just remember the time, let it dominate your imagination, while others carry out their plans to buy a new collar for the dog or to wink at the next spectacle alive?
*
Shelli: There is no remedy for those whose hearts are wounded but silence and shadow.
Octavia: That's a problem of any unfree existence - one cannot have these silences and shadows unless one is free.
*
Jackie: I'm tired of this fake optimism I see everywhere. Where did all of our critical resentment go? Have we just become too daunted by how much there is in the world to be critical of, and so decided just to be accepting and friendly towards it all? Or was it just because we realized that most people aren't really bad people, they usually have very precise reasons for behaving the way they do that could likely be found if one had a videotape of their entire lives? It seems in either case, we've adopted that kind of 'niceness' which only makes us feel good, but which does not actually help anyone.
Octavia: That reminds me - the best way to behave yourself is to pretend that you are being filmed. We too often look through our own eyes at the world, and thus colour it with everything that is individual, and therefore irrational, in us (what is insanity but a kind of excessive individualism?). The video-tape can be private - only viewed by ourselves, but at least it would then represent the ideal image we would want to have preserved of ourselves, and not that unideal thing we usually carry around with ourselves, unthinking.
*
Jackie: What is fun? Thinking, reflecting, questioning. Those are the only three things I could really call 'fun'. Everything else I just do to pass the time away...
*
Jackie: What if we are only able to love ourselves, and therefore we only love people to the degree that they resemble ourselves? Do I hate the racist because of the bigotry of his views, or do I hate him because of this sheer distance from what I am?
Octavia: Love is a rock drawn from no quarry.
*
Jackie: I like profound people - there's more room inside them to go fishing.
*
Jackie: Anyone who prefers a fine meal over a fine book is more animal than human.
*
Jackie: Is there anything more satisfying than the 'I told you so" feeling? My only regret about there not being an afterlife is that I won't be able to tell all the Christians and Muslims, "Look, I told you so! There's no afterlife!"
Shelli: The only way to prove it would be for us all to die - and yet death is that state of being in which there is nothing left to prove.
*
Octavia: Most people don't live with enough awareness about life to recognize how intense it is.
Jackie: For some reason, I intensely loathe insularity. As my friend Jane wrote me and expressed the same feelings - I want to experience absolutely everything. I wouldn't be treating life with the same respect it deserves if I didn't do this. This means being able to see things from as many perspectives as possible and also means being as knowledgeable as possible.
Shelli: The problem is that there is a lot of useless information out there and a lot of banal subcultures that people participate in. _______ is about as relevant as any pulp romance novel that will be out-of-print in 20 years - so why learn about him? (He's so not worth learning about, I'm not even going to say his name).
Octavia: As long as you are always learning, you shouldn't worry if you are learning about the right things. Chances are, you and the people you care about most will find some way to meet in the middle.
*
Shelli: Sometimes, the greater dishonour we can do to someone is to take them seriously, for this implies that their way of life has been based on careful reflection, thought, and a decidedness of the will, when the reality is more likely that they are showing you only half a shadow of the kind of person they would really like to be.
Octavia: It's in the same way that we can only learn to love our parents after our teenage years if we cease to take them seriously as rational human beings and accept the fact that they grant themselves a sense of significance by playing this role of 'parent'.
*
Jackie: I'm like the female Nietzsche, except in some ways I am more Nietzchean than he - it only took me one semester's worth of academia to realize what bullshit it is.
*
Octavia: Life is like a brightening cloud - we stand in the billowy center of this cumulous and slowly discover the things around us. They take shape and take on a lustre suddenly new - suddenly we notice the figures around us in their genuine outlines. And yet it never dawned on us before that these figures had such outlines, no, we only saw the colours of them and let them have the shapes we gave them in our minds.
*
Shelli: There was a time on earth when the mornings sang. Those days one could smell oneself as in a earthly womb, overgrown and rich with everything real. In fact, nothing was unreal - that is the essential thing to remember about this time. There was never a question, never a doubt about the things given to your through your senses and your mind. It all flourished before you, and you simply could not help but be enraptured by it.
Jackie: But where has that time gone?
Shelli: Why ask - 'where was that time gone?' Isn't it enough to just remember the time, let it dominate your imagination, while others carry out their plans to buy a new collar for the dog or to wink at the next spectacle alive?
*
Shelli: There is no remedy for those whose hearts are wounded but silence and shadow.
Octavia: That's a problem of any unfree existence - one cannot have these silences and shadows unless one is free.
*
Jackie: I'm tired of this fake optimism I see everywhere. Where did all of our critical resentment go? Have we just become too daunted by how much there is in the world to be critical of, and so decided just to be accepting and friendly towards it all? Or was it just because we realized that most people aren't really bad people, they usually have very precise reasons for behaving the way they do that could likely be found if one had a videotape of their entire lives? It seems in either case, we've adopted that kind of 'niceness' which only makes us feel good, but which does not actually help anyone.
Octavia: That reminds me - the best way to behave yourself is to pretend that you are being filmed. We too often look through our own eyes at the world, and thus colour it with everything that is individual, and therefore irrational, in us (what is insanity but a kind of excessive individualism?). The video-tape can be private - only viewed by ourselves, but at least it would then represent the ideal image we would want to have preserved of ourselves, and not that unideal thing we usually carry around with ourselves, unthinking.
*
Jackie: What is fun? Thinking, reflecting, questioning. Those are the only three things I could really call 'fun'. Everything else I just do to pass the time away...
*
Jackie: What if we are only able to love ourselves, and therefore we only love people to the degree that they resemble ourselves? Do I hate the racist because of the bigotry of his views, or do I hate him because of this sheer distance from what I am?
Octavia: Love is a rock drawn from no quarry.
*
Jackie: I like profound people - there's more room inside them to go fishing.
*
Jackie: Anyone who prefers a fine meal over a fine book is more animal than human.
*
Jackie: Is there anything more satisfying than the 'I told you so" feeling? My only regret about there not being an afterlife is that I won't be able to tell all the Christians and Muslims, "Look, I told you so! There's no afterlife!"
Shelli: The only way to prove it would be for us all to die - and yet death is that state of being in which there is nothing left to prove.
*
Octavia: Most people don't live with enough awareness about life to recognize how intense it is.
Jackie: For some reason, I intensely loathe insularity. As my friend Jane wrote me and expressed the same feelings - I want to experience absolutely everything. I wouldn't be treating life with the same respect it deserves if I didn't do this. This means being able to see things from as many perspectives as possible and also means being as knowledgeable as possible.
Shelli: The problem is that there is a lot of useless information out there and a lot of banal subcultures that people participate in. _______ is about as relevant as any pulp romance novel that will be out-of-print in 20 years - so why learn about him? (He's so not worth learning about, I'm not even going to say his name).
Octavia: As long as you are always learning, you shouldn't worry if you are learning about the right things. Chances are, you and the people you care about most will find some way to meet in the middle.
*
Shelli: Sometimes, the greater dishonour we can do to someone is to take them seriously, for this implies that their way of life has been based on careful reflection, thought, and a decidedness of the will, when the reality is more likely that they are showing you only half a shadow of the kind of person they would really like to be.
Octavia: It's in the same way that we can only learn to love our parents after our teenage years if we cease to take them seriously as rational human beings and accept the fact that they grant themselves a sense of significance by playing this role of 'parent'.
*
Jackie: I'm like the female Nietzsche, except in some ways I am more Nietzchean than he - it only took me one semester's worth of academia to realize what bullshit it is.
posted by Jackie | 7:28 AM
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