alex > Recent Status Updates

So far, nothing but long-winded descriptions of nature and one-dimensional characters that are either goodies or baddies. At least Otranto -- Udolpho's Gothic predecessor which also has flat characters -- has the virtue of brevity. The characters in Otranto feel archetypal, like figures in a fairy tale. If you're going to use so many words describing how characters feel, at least make them interesting!

"The logos is what human beings are continually amidst and what they are away from all the same, absently present; they are thus the axunetoi, those who do not grasp."

The reality is that dying isn't bad, but it takes forever. And that forever is no time all. I know that sounds like a contradiction, or maybe just wordplay. What it really is, it turns out, is a matter of perspective.

"...that monotonous state of the soul halfway between fulfilment and futility that comes with life in the country... In the country, the gods still come to people. A man matters, his experiences matter, but in the city, where experiences come by the thousands, we can no longer relate them to ourselves; and this is of course the beginning of life's notorious turning into abstraction"