… there’s certainly an image that comes to mind when I sing that song—of a certain nihilistic exhalation when you’re feeling negative about the world and hating the president because he’s a corporate tool, but then the circle tightens and you’re hating your cousin and your mother and eventually everyone. It’s a criticism about the things that aren’t good enough. This wine isn’t good enough or this band isn’t good enough and, eventually, it’s just your best friend and closet confidant. And then it’s just you. That’s the constricting nature to negation; that’s just the sad part of it.
I could be well moved, if I were as you / If I could pray to move, prayers would move me / But I am constant as the northern star / of whose true-fix’d and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.
Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
In all cases, excepting those of the bear and leopard, the female is less spirited than the male; in regard to the two exceptional cases, the superiority in courage rests with the female. With all other animals the female is softer in disposition than the male, is more mischievous, less simple, more impulsive, and more attentive to the nurture of the young; the male, on the other hand, is more spirited than the female, more savage, more simple and less cunning. The traces of these differentiated characteristics are more or less visible everywhere, but they are especially visible where character is the more developed, and most of all in man.
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
And when the lambs say among themselves, ‘These birds of prey are evil, and he who least resembles a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb,—should he not be good?’ then there is nothing to carp with in this ideal’s establishment, though the birds of prey may regard it a little mockingly, and maybe say to themselves, ‘We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even love them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.’
In the United States of America, we have the Freedom of Information Act, and this blog is available to all. Of course, this blog would be available with or without the FOIA, but it sounds more profound when I infer (falsely) that it is here because of it.
You have to start somewhere, and making grandiose claims is a great way to get at least one butt-cheek off the bar stool. Today, I cut off my own ear, was crucified for public nuisance, and sentenced to die by drinking hemlock. Of course, there might have also been a couple of trips to the snooze button in the middle of all that…
In reality, the most profound thing that comes to mind is this: If you are feeling isolated, you’re not alone.
Remember the above, add me to your safe senders list, and mark your calendar now for Dec 20th 2012 Pre-Apocalyptic Green-M&Ms-and-Togas Midnight Bash!
