riona > Recent Status Updates

“Where can one think of fleeing, if the cell is everything? … And i feel an overwhelming, absurd desire for a kind of satanism before satan, a desire that one day—a day without time or substance—an escape leading outside of God will be discovered, and our deepest selves will somehow cease participating in being and non-being.” pg. 45

“Oh, how lonely it is in the open country at night, in the midst of that singing when you yourself cannot sing; in the midst of the incessant cries of joy when you yourself cannot be joyful, when the moon, which cares not whether it is spring or winter, whether men are alive or dead, looks down, lonely, too.” pg. 502

impressed with how beautifully chekhov handles short stories. however compacted each story is, its simplicity has its own complexion in moral and ethical themes. chekhov’s prose is concise, but delivers such a heavy weight of realism despite the light material. i can see myself reading my favorite stories from him before bedtime when i finish this. bittersweet aching life: peasantry, law, love and religion … etc

A gross pessimism that enthralls 18th century France: lucrative odor of brass, hides and skin, seeping cream, tanning leather, fragrant limbs, meat and sporadic France. Grenouille’s hopeless upbringing & madame gaillard even more, with her poker—accidental lobotomy & resigned ironic death.. I’m so inlove.

“I have found myself continually bringing to mind that picture of my daughter hanging in her room for days on end. The horror of that image has never diminished, but It has long ceased to be a morbid matter; as with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.”
- Pg. 54

so far I heavily dislike this book: It reeks of wanting to seem esoteric, oriental and eastern in the whitest, western way possible. the use of language sounds like a world-history buff’s puke & vomit smeared onto a messy canvas to portray an “exotic” appearance. like a white lady’s first visit outside