Maya Spektorov’s Reviews > The Empusium > Status Update

“we are shaped not by what is strong in us but by the anomaly, by whatever is weak and not accepted. if you, young person, were to ask me what the soul is, i would answer like this: the soul is the weakest thing within us. your soul is in your morbid symptoms.”

“[thoughts] are wisps of sensations carried by time like gossamer, moved by the wind, trails of tiny reactions that arrange themselves into random sequences eager for meaning. but their nature is volatile and impermanent, they appear and disappear, leaving behind an impression that something really did happen and that we took part in it. and that what we are stuck inside is stable and certain. that it exists.”

“this wonder of technology radiated such overwhelming optimism that for all who came to admire it, death must have seemed an archaic part of the old order, a primordial failing from which humankind would escape as soon as it achieved its desire for modernity and a permanent trust in technology.”

“the ritual of the fall had started, as if the proximity of death activated reserves of extraordinary energy in these trees that, instead of continuing to support life, allowed them to celebrate dying.”

“he is overcome by a familiar sense of sadness, typical of those convinced of their own impending death. the world around him feels like a strange scenery painted on a paper screen, as if he could stick a finger in this monumental landscape and drill a hole in it leading straight to nothingness. and as if nothingness will start pouring out of there in a flood, and will catch up to him too, grab him by the throat”

“against the deep red of the western sky the whole figure gives an unsettling impression of having arrived here, in these melancholy mountains, from the world beyond.”