Awareness

Release patriotism before it becomes necrophilia.

A moment like this (Stamone)

Every story is a dead-end, you always arrive at a moment like this. So what to do, go back, start again? Even though you’re old enough to know that every story, sooner or later, slams up against the last word?

Domenico Starnone, Ties

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With the moment (Walter)

Then she smiled, and in that instant, if such a thing were possible, Pasquale fell in love, and he would remain in love for the rest of his life—not so much with the woman, whom he didn't even know, but with the moment.

Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

Surprising

What is often most surprising in other people is their susceptibilities.

Not everything

There is so much in everything—
but not everything.

On time

Time is inferred,
not felt.

Failure

Failure to forgive
indicates a lack of love
or a festering wound.

Changing the world (Einstein)

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking.  It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

Albert Einstein

New poems

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On reality

Reality only has to be real, not plausible.

How much

How much can I question
with assertion?

The Uncanny Valley (Anders)

The reason the Uncanny Valley exists is because humans created it to put other people into. It's how we justify killing each other.

Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

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First person (Bishop)

But we are lured into believing that the first person is the manifestation of an authentic self. Or: we fall for the first person because we feel so little coherence in our own internal lives, and immersing ourselves in a sustained first person narrative gives us the false reassurance of an illusion. Only we forget that this is what that is, which is, of course, part of the appeal.

Stephanie Bishop

A choice

To be given a choice is to be given a chance.

This gap, this distance (Cusk)

He was, in effect, manufacturing an illusion: no matter what he did, the gap between illusion and reality could never be closed. Gradually, he said, this gap, this distance between how things were and how I wanted them to be, began to undermine me. I felt myself becoming empty, he said, as though I had been living until now on the reserves I had accumulated over the years and they had gradually dwindled away.

Rachel Cusk, Outline

Destination

Where you thought you were going is the only impossible destination.

A prompting (Cusk)

The unexpected sometimes looks like a prompting of fate.

Rachel Cusk, Outline

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