You know: in a foolish, undiscriminating way, I've been happy these last few months. I don't know why. I just am. I love my friends; I love my pupils; I love what I read; I -- dammit -- love my thoughts. I love the taste of oranges.
Thornton Wilder in a letter to Gertrude Stein, Aug 14, 1936

Thursday, July 1, 2010

ITALICS MINE (4)


For both Darwin and Freud the idea of death saves us from the idea that there is anything to be saved from. If we are not fallen creatures, but simply creatures, we cannot be redeemed. If we are not deluded by the wish for immortality, transience doesn't diminish us...If mortality were a flaw or a punishment, we were always verging on humiliation. Tyrannical fantasies of our own perfectibility still lurk in even our simplest ideals, Darwin and Freud intimate, so that any ideal can become an excuse for punishment. Lives dominated by impossible ideals -- complete honesty, absolute knowledge, perfect happiness, eternal love -- are lives experienced as continuous failure.

Adams Phillips, Darwin's Worms

2 comments:

  1. living on $60 a week is liberating.

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  2. The antithetic book hall echos at
    The hot hit hook, absence all tacit
    In the teachable kitsch, so loath to

    Thank the aesthetic oilcloth boa
    All thickish at the beacon, the too
    Satanic bolo tie, the hot chalk, the

    Heathenish thicket, all to boo cat
    The blanks I hoot, chaotic athlete
    That the hole in the boat is a clock

    ReplyDelete