“It was ironic, really - you want to die because you can't be bothered to go on living - but then you're expected to get all energetic and move furniture and stand on chairs and hoist ropes and do complicated knots and attach things to other things and kick stools from under you and mess around with hot baths and razor blades and extension cords and electrical appliances and weedkiller. Suicide was a complicated, demanding business, often involving visits to hardware shops.  And if you've managed to drag yourself from the bed and go down the road to the garden center or the drug store, by then the worst is over. At that point you might as well just go to work.”  (Marian Keyes, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married)


I am sinking, and there is nothing but endless ocean around me...oh, there are plenty of voices telling me to swim, that this is how the ocean is, that the next wave will lift me up... but there is nothing to grab onto, no proffered hands, no buoyant flotsam, no boat straining to come to pick me up.  The mind numbing darkness bids me to stop struggling and give up to the waves their sacrifice.  But something keeps the body moving treading helplessly...

“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome  of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult,  that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren,  that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.”  (Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections)



Or we sink into non-productive pity for ourselves ...

Why bother, you ask?

"The world languishes for want of an ever scarce necessity, let us be extravagantly generous with the abundance we possess . . . the answer is simple; let us but speak kind words to one another."

Why bother with a blog? After all they die so easily. You start off believing that by writing down some of the thoughts whirling in your mind it will somehow clear your thinking, you solicit feedback, debate, argument, comment to test those thoughts.

But there is silence, because no one is reading them . . . and you come to realize that yes, you are alone in the world.

But there is a responsibility we bear, as unique entities in this existence to pass along to an undefined posterity some understanding of life as we knew it. In so doing we come to understand ourselves in our differences, and the debt of appreciation we owe to those who have done so for us.


We write for the lonely to come.

Remembrance...

Ay as from dreams of some old glorious fight,

Flags flying, and shaken steel, and mounds of slain,
A soldier starts, and feels his old wound pain
His tossing side: anon he sits upright
And rubs his lonely eyes in the dim night,
The glorious vision fading from his brain:
Only the sullen-throbbing pangs remain,
The unforgetful wound, the tear-dimmed sight.
So oft times having wandered in my sleep
By those loved lanes and hedgerows to our tryst,
I press the lids of thy great eyes, and weep
To feel against my heart thy wild heart leap
Once more--Night yawns--Where are the eyes I kissed?
The heart-aches and the tears are all I keep.
(John Barlas)

Times.. .

The Time hath been, a boyish, blushing Time,
When Modesty was scarcely held a crime,
When the most Wicked had some touch of grace,
And trembled to meet Virtue face to face,
When Those, who, in the cause of Sin grown grey,
Had serv'd her without grudging day by day,
Were yet so weak an awkward shame to feel,
And strove that glorious service to conceal;
We, better bred, and than our Sires more wise,
Such paltry narrowness of soul despise,
To Virtue ev'ry mean pretence disclaim,
Lay bare our crimes, and glory in our shame.
(Charles Churchill)

Empty & Alone

“I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleamings of an empty heart.
The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb,
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.
Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter's whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.”
(Alexander Pushkin)

Gleanings

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world." (Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden)

“In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.” (Sigmund Freud)

“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.” (Leon Trotsky)

“Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it.” (Walter M. Miller, Jr.)

“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness.” (T.H. White)

"You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.” (W. Somerset Maugham)