lucila soto

1984
In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.

There was a time when the world was half finished. There were no colors anywhere except for a set of paints which the gods had given to an artist.

– The fabric of the cosmos. Space. Time. And the texture of reality. Brian Greene.
The real question is whether all your pondering and analysis will convince you that life is worth living. That’s what it all comes down to. Everything else is detail.

There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Albert Camus.

The Infinities
Spinoza says the wise man thinks only of death but all of his meditations are a meditation upon life. Which is true. Death is not the point. Life is the point. But death is the beginning of what gives life its point.

Dare me to jump and I will
I’ll fall from your grace
But I’ll never let go of your hand
TOM WAITS (bawlers)

Snow White -Donald Barthelem
We exist in different universes of discourse.

Me: why aren’t there pictures of crying people? As an emotion it should also be documented. Otherwise you are incomplete in your storytelling.

An intimidation followed by a demoralization eventuating in a disintegration.

She was experiencing a degree if anger at male domination of the physical world.

I have conflicting ideas. But the main theme that runs through my brain is that what is, is insufficient.

What is merely fashionable will fade away, and what is merely new will fade away, bur what will not fade away, is the way I feel: analogies break down, regimes break down, but the way I feel remains. I feel abandoned.

The refusal of emotion produces nervousness.

This concatenation of outward and visible signs may I say may detonate an inward invisible subjective correlative, booming in the deeps of the gut like an Alka-Seltzer to produce tranquility.

After a life rich in emotional defeats, I have looked around for other modes of misery, other roads to destruction.

[the quality of life]It seems to be deprived. I don’t mean that the deprived people are deprived, although they are, clearly, but that even the fat are deprived.

… Spontaneously and scandalous hurling itself into the arms of bad situations, with never a are for who is watching or real values.

Why is it that we can never be satisfied. It is as if we were designed that way. Ad if that were part of the cosmic design.

-Slaughterhouse five. Kurt Vonnegut.

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news if massacres of enemies is nit to fill them with satisfaction or glee.

I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.

When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trustful and beautiful. They shared.

“That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.”

The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel.

It was very exiting for her, taking away dignity in the name of love.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies.

God gave me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.

Corpses created by military science.

I supposed they will all want dignity.

Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It has twenty-dollar bills for leaves. It’s flowers were government bonds. It’s fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer. So it goes.

“Find your Africa” – Dave Chapelle

Mindfulness: being where you are, not where you’ve been, not where you’re going and recognizing all things will pass will pass joy will pass, sadness will pass and your life will pass. Embracing the mortality and being in that mindful place is freedom to be where you are, everything that happened adds up to you.

Drown – Junot Díaz
She smelled like herself, like the wind through a tree.

That was the way he was with his punishments: imaginative.

Work, Tía said, like it was somebody’s name she didn’t like.

You watch anything long enough and you can become an expert at it.

If something inside of me is saying no, why do I say, Yeah, sure?

You know what it is when you get back with somebody you’ve loved. It felt better than it ever was, better than it ever could be again.

She has discovered the secret to silence: pouring café without a splash, walking between rooms as if gliding on a cushion of felt, crying without a sound.

You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There’s a lot out there.

You can’t be anywhere forever.