Ben > Recent Status Updates

Independence! That is the secret of philosophy. To be independent of the opinions of your neighbors, of your relations, of your friends, to be independent of this ridiculous itch for being heard of, to take the neck of your desire to compete and ring it, and then, when it becomes a question of pride, to let your pride tower up like a wavering, fluctuating, gigantic genie from the smoke bottle of your own magical soul

"My cowardice in regard to ordinary matters of business is simply incredible"

Really good

Drinking cup after cup of coffee...I had that delicious sensation that I am always struggling to feel, of being a real stranger to the whole of our planet—a stranger from Saturn, say!—wandering up and down the earth, and observing without hatred, without curiosity, without envy, without love, without disgust, the customs of the tribes of men as if they were the ways of fish in an aquarium.

"I remember perfectly well thinking to myself as I trod this path through Waringore, that, whatever was happening to me in life, just to be able to stare at this green moss, at these fallen twigs, at these blood-stained funguses, was sufficient reward for having been born upon this cruelty-blasted planet!"

🌀😵‍💫🌀😵‍💫🌀😵‍💫🌀😵‍💫🌀😵‍💫🌀😵‍💫🌀😵‍💫🌀😵‍💫

The first prose poem is about a museum of different types of wind captured in jars. Nothing charms me more than original impractical ideas 🍃

I been fascinated by the legendary mythology of the stars, their astrological influences. I accept them, in fact, at their face value as the imperishable companions and fatal accomplices of our tragic human drama.

How crafty and subtle are the impulses of one’s own mind in this matter of the getting of wisdom! Yes, the acquisition, little by little, of what subsequently we come to regard as the conjuring trick by which life can be adequately handled, does not arrive by any steady or rational development. It comes by airy, evasive, indirect, intermittent approaches, and then by occasional violent earthquake shocks!

... this is blowing my mind.

Worthy of the hype

So basically this French dude reached the pinnacle of poetry at 21, and then fucked off to Africa to become a merchant. I feel a similar impulse when reading his work. Rather than lounging about reading I'd rather be engaging fully with my life.

"in a net I seek to hold the wind"

What a nice way of saying what we humans attempt with our lives in all manner of ways, trying to capture magic. It's like surfing a wave; you only have a short time in the wave, you can only ride it if you are in harmony with it, and that limited time you have on the wave makes the entire experience. Could you hold the ocean in a bucket?

Takeaways from Chapter Two:

- Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, are not successfully able to organize in groups larger than 100 at max. Humans, through their language, are able to craft myths as the social glue to organize masses in cooperation. Nations and
laws are powerful fictions

- Language is technology that enables us to change our lives without being bound to our biologies, hyperspeed evolution

We have to live a long time to know what are the important moments. We think, at the time, they are the days when we change continents, or hemispheres, or nationalities, or religions, or infatuations, but they do not as a rule turn out to be these great lumbering events. They turn out to be some little, tiny, infinitesimal sensation that reveals to us the clue to our life.

Sometimes I think that nobody is just one person, that actually we’re a bunch of different people and we have to figure out how to get them all to cooperate and fool everyone else into thinking that we’re just one person, even though everybody else is doing the same thing.

Great chapter on Napoleon

The first chapter was such a joy to read. A sublime description of Tokyo intertwined with the awe that we are struck with when considering the world we find ourselves in for the first time. 🥲

The tension between Captain Wentworth and Anne, my goodness; fanning myself.

“There ought to be a “Fairy Sprightly” whose chief purpose in life is to guard from neglect and destruction the inanimate things into which human souls have been flung!”

The story of Marie Curie, Queen of Radium, is killing me 🥲 I reckon more beautifully captured than any film could do.

If Kody heads toward X and X is the voice of God and Kody travels at such and such speed over uneven ground called Y and Kody doesn't necessarily believe in God and knows he has been feeling strange today and wants to go to church for the first time in his life just to see what will happen, when will he arrive?

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