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)

Death or Life?

“A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they've all let him down.” (Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down)

There are times when patience and contemplative quiet wear thin, when despair and rage and tedium combine to overthrow the settled mind and to torture the tired heart.  When one wearies of the world and those in it . . . when even beauty and art can barely restrain the looming indifference.  Comes down the darkness and Melancholy opens her all too inviting and long familiar bosom . . .

Once you realize that there is no changing the world, and that very few individuals even notice your existence, that the ideals of humanity have little to do with, or effect on, the reality of life on this planet; then what is left?

". . .For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all . . ."

(William Shakespeare, Hamlet)

The embattled seclusion and delusion (for Hamlet really is going mad even while he pretends to play at it) exampled in Shakespeare's play and the questioning of the paradoxes of life is all there is left to the thinking mind, and so our heart must save us.

To Passion

An acolyte to a chimerical image

I adore a slatternly goddess

Whose temples are dark rain glutted alleys

And the shadowed depths of human eyes

For want of her I devour my own soul

In inked night hours and deep brooding clouds

The dolorous reeling beauty of drink

And fever'd dreams of melancholy lust

Not in dear poetry condolence find

Nor Lethe's sad draught of forgetfullness

Holy incense, sickly-sweet, quenches nought.

I desire my cruel mistress more than hope

A balm long empty. In my spurn'd spiritless heart

Yet burn the hellfire coals of her votive flame.

I Find No Peace

I find no peace, and all my war is done.
I fear and hope. I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I season.
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not--yet can I scape no wise--
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain.
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health.
I love another, and thus I hate myself.
I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth me both life and death,
And my delight is causer of this strife.



 

(Sir Thomas Wyatt,October 11, 1542)

 

Autumn Musings . . .

In autumn moonlight, when the white air wan
Is fragrant in the wake of summer hence,
'Tis sweet to sit entranced, and muse thereon
In melancholy and godlike indolence:
When the proud spirit, lull'd by mortal prime
To fond pretence of immortality,
Vieweth all moments from the birth of time,
All things whate'er have been or yet shall be.
And like the garden, where the year is spent,
The ruin of old life is full of yearning,
Mingling poetic rapture of lament
With flowers and sunshine of spring's sure returning;
Only in visions of the white air wan
By godlike fancy seized and dwelt upon.

(Robert Bridges, 1844-1930)

Forgetfulness . . .

I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body's tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; 'tis the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessèd the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone,

(George Santayana)