levinalex

If you have any fact that is really sinister, that can only point to some sinister underpinning, forget it. Because you can never figure out on your own all the non-sinister explanations of that fact.

— Josiah Tompson via Erol Morris

Dem Schornstein der Lokomotive entstieg Dampf, oder so genannter Rauch. Und das hübsche Vögelein, das in diesen Rauch hineinflog, kam aus demselben verhuscht und zerknittert wieder heraus.

— 

Daniil Charms¹

I sat on a bus and watched as people got on, sat down and got off again once the bus had taken them close enough to their destination

There was, however, one man who sat at the very front of the bus and steared. He chose not to get off even after the bus had completed several loops.

— Sebastian Borckenhagen, The Man is Disappearing

We run for the weaker soldiers
Even when they are not around
Always run for the weaker soldiers
A morning after without a sound

Stories live in seeds to believe
Slowly glued inside the eye
We will find our right for tomorrow
Settle down and reach for the sky

— St. Thomas - Falling Down

For a while I was convinced that I saw the world. But the world as a whole was unreachable for my eyes, and I saw only fragments of it. And everything that I saw, I called ‘world fragments’. And I observed characteristics of those fragments and, by observing them, I developed a science.

I understood that there were intelligent and unintelligent characteristics in the fragments. I distinguished the fragments and gave them proper names. And depending on their characteristics, I saw the world fragments to be either intelligent or unintelligent.

There were also world fragments that could deduce. And these fragments also observed the other world fragments, and me. And all those fragments were similar to each other, and I was similar to them. And I would talk to those fragments.

I would say: “Fragments are the thunder.” The fragments would say: “A heap of time.” I would say: “I am, also, a part of some trinity.” The parts would respond: “We are seeing nothing but little specks.”

And suddenly, I stopped seeing them, and then I stopped seeing the rest of the fragments. And I feared that the world was disappearing.

But then I understood that I did not see the parts of the world anymore, but all the world as a whole. At first I thought that this was NOTHINGNESS. But then I understood that this was the world, and that what I had been seeing earlier, was not the world. And I always knew that this was the world, but, what that was that I had been seeing earlier, I still do not know.

When the fragments disappeared, their intelligent characteristics stopped being intelligent, and their unintelligent characteristics stopped being unintelligent. And the world as a whole stopped being intelligent or unintelligent. But when I understood that I was seeing the world as a whole, I suddenly stopped seeing it at all. I got scared because I thought the world had disappeared. And while I was thinking, I understood, that if the world really had disappeared than I could not be thinking. And I looked, searched for the world, but I could not find it. After that I did not know where to look. Then I remembered that, no matter whether I looked or not — the world was always around me. And now it was not anymore. There was only me.

And then I realized, that I was the world.
But the world was not me.
Although, at the same time, I was the world.
But the world was not me.
But I was the world.
But the world was not me.
But I was the world.
But the world was not me.
But I was the world.

And after that I did not think anything anymore.

— Даниил Хармс, Whirled, via, via, via

[It] can come as a shock to realise that the world we hear described by travellers of previous centuries (or even previous decades) and biologists of today really did exist. The state it’s in now is only the result of what we’ve done to it, and the mildness of the disappointment we feel when we arrive somewhere and find that it’s a bit tatty is only a measure of how far our own expectations have been degraded and how little we understand what we’ve lost. The people who do understand what we’ve lost are the ones who are rushing around in a frenzy trying to save the bits that are left.

— Douglas Adams

via

The Economist via The Dish

nevver:

because technology and economic logic has gotten so sophisticated, cruelties can be perpetrated now that would have been unimaginable two or three hundred years ago. Therefore we are under more of a moral obligation to try very very very hard to develop compassion and mercy and empathy.

— David Foster Wallace, via Ostap Karmodi via Andrew Sullivan