theread.me/snippets.md

---
layout: post
title:  "Snippets"
date:   2020-12-07 20:47:00
permalink: snippets/
categories: snippets
author: Mahdi
---

Short snippets of thought. Ramblings. Random shite.

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Was thinking about what is creativity: connection of seemingly irrelevant concepts. Puns are creative because they make a non-obvious connection. The connection is not nonsensical, but not obvious either.

----

On Neurodiversity: Dyslexia is not a disorder if society doesn’t depend on reading so much. Reading new invention. What about people who have trouble using technology? Is that a disorder? Is it a bug of the reading and writing systems or humans? What if it was on a computer screen? Would we think of it still as a disease or would we fix the program?

----

Pieces from Austerlitz:
“As I think of how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on”

“All I could think was that such a sentence only appears to mean something, but in truth is at best a makeshift expedient, a kind of unhealthy growth issuing from our ignorance, something which we use, in the same was many sea plants and animals use their tentacles, to grope blindly through the darkness enveloping us. The very thing which may usually convey a sense of purposeful intelligence- the exposition of an idea by means of a certain stylistic facility-now seemed to me nothing but an entirely arbitrary or deluded enterprise.”

“I sensed that in truth, I had neither memory nor the power of thought, nor even any existence, that all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away to a place of execution I would have gone meekly, without a word, without so much as opening my eyes.”

“In this dreadful state of mind I sat for hours, for days on end with my face to the <i>wall</i>, tormenting myself and gradually discovering the horror of finding that even the smallest task or duty, for instance arranging assorted objects in a drawer, can be beyond one's power.”

“At some time in the past, I thought, I must have made a mistake, and now I am living the wrong life.”

“Marie moved closer to me and asked whether I had remembered that tomorrow was my birthday. When we wake up tomorrow, she said, I shall with you every happiness, and it will be like telling a machine working by some unknown mechanism that I hope it will run well. Can't you tell me the reason, she asked, said Austerlitz, why ou remain so unapproachable? Why, she said, have you been like a pool of frozen water ever since we came here? Why do I see your lips opening as if you were about to say something, maybe even cry out loud, and then I hear not the slightest sound? Why did you never unpack when we arrived, always preferring to live out of a rucksack, as it were? We stood there a couple of paces apart, like two actors on stage. The colour of Marie's eyes changed as the light dimmed. And once again I tried to explain to her and to myself what incomprehensible feelings had been weighing on me over the last few days; how I kept thinking, like a madman, that there were mysterious signs and portents all around me here; how it even seemed to me as if the silent facades of the buildings knew something ominous about me, how I had always believed I must be alone, and in spite of my longing for her I now felt it more than ever before.”

“That evening in Marienbad, said Austerlitz, I could not admit to myself how right everything Marie said was, but today I know why I felt obliged to turn away when anyone came too close to me, I know that I thought this turning away made me safe, and that at the same time I saw myself transformed into a frightful and hideous creature, a man beyond the pale.”

“What made me uneasy at the sight of it, however, was not the question of whether the complex form of the capital, now covered with a puce-tinged encrustation, had really impressed itself on my mind when I passed through Pilsen with the children's transport in the summer of 1939, but the idea, ridiculous in itself, that this cast-iron column, which with its scaly surface seemed almost to approach the nature of a living being, might remember me and was, if I may so put it, said Austerlitz, a witness to what I could no longer recollect for myself.”

“Might it not be, continued Austerlitz, that we also have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time, so to speak?”

“No one can explain exactly what happens within us when the doors behind which our childhood terrors lurk are flung open.”

-----

"What if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence--even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existance is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you." - Nietzsche

-----

Pieces from The Reader's Block by David Markson:

"If an ox could paint a picture, his god would look like an ox. Said Xenophanes"

"What has happened? It is life that has happened; and I am old."

"Despite decades of self analysis, Freud was so anxiety-ridden about missing trains that he would arrive at the station as much as an hour early. Freud."

Sylvia Plath: Horder prescribed her an anti-depressant, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, a few days before her suicide. Knowing she was at risk alone with two young children, he says he visited her daily and made strenuous efforts to have her admitted to a hospital; when that failed, he arranged for a live-in nurse. Commentators have argued that because anti-depressants may take up to three weeks to take effect, her prescription from Horder would not have taken full effect.
The nurse was due to arrive at nine on the morning of February 11, 1963, to help Plath with the care of her children. Upon arrival, she could not get into the flat but eventually gained access with the help of a workman, Charles Langridge. They found Plath dead of carbon monoxide poisoning with her head in the oven, having sealed the rooms between her and her sleeping children with tape, towels and cloths. At approximately 4:30 a.m. Plath had placed her head in the oven, with the gas turned on. She was 30 years old. She left bread and butter and milk in the bedroom for her two children who were sleeping.

"John Donne posed for a painting in his own shroud. And kept it beside his bed during a long final illness."

"Manet was so vituperatively condemned by critics that for a time he was too embarrassed to ask anyone to pose for him.
Before Cezanne had gained any recognition he once burst into tears when someone sincerely admired his work"

"The Persians deployed so many bowmen at Thermopylae that it was said their arrows would blot out the sun.
To which a Spartan commander: all the better, then we will be fighting in the shade
In fact only two Spartans survived Thermopylae. One was killed in a battle elsewhere. The other hanged himself in disgrace."

"At twenty, Bach made a pilgrimage of more than two hundred miles, on foot, to hear Buxtehude play the organ."

"Aesop was a slave. Terence was a slave. Epictetus was a slave."

"I am weary, Ananda, and wish to lie down."

Galileo’s Abjuration 1633 ...I abjure with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. And I swear that for the future I will neither say nor assert in speaking or writing such things as may bring upon me similar suspicion; and if I know any heretic, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor and Ordinary of the place in which I may be. I also swear and promise to adopt and observe entirely all the penances which have been or may be by this Holy Office imposed on me. And if I contravene any of these said promises, protests, or oaths, (which God forbid!) I submit myself to all the pains and penalties which by the Sacred Canons and other Decrees general and particular are against such offenders imposed and promulgated. So help me God and the Holy Gospels, which I touch with my own hands.  I Galileo Galilei aforesaid have abjured, sworn, and promised, and hold myself bound as above; and in token of the truth, with my own hand have subscribed the present schedule of my abjuration, and have recited it word by word. In Rome, at the Convent della Minerva, this 22nd day of June, 1633.  I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured as above, with my own ha

["Eppur si muove"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves)

"Petrarch sometimes wrote letters to long-dead authors. He was also a dedicated hunter of classic manuscripts. Once, after discovering some previously unknown works of Cicero, he wrote Cicero the news."

"Poe was expelled from West Point for refusing to obey military orders. Later, James McNeill Whistler would fail there academically."

"im westen nichts neues: nothing new in the west"

"Impoverished and freezing, Gerard de Nerval hanged himself near a cheap Paris doss-house after no one responded to his late-night knock"

"Walter Benjamin committed suicide at the border between France and Spain in 1940. Fleeing the Nazis, he had been turned back by Spanish authorities."

"The vocabulary in Shakespeare's plays includes 29,066 different words. There are 29,899 different words in Ulysses."

Jarndyce and Jarndyce 

Occam’s razor

"Life is a long preparation for something that never happens" -Yeats

"Mark Rothko committed suicide by slashing the inside of his arms at the elbows with a double-edged razor blade. First folding Kleenex over one edge of the blade to keep from cutting his fingers"

"Jacques Louis David's _Death of Socrates_ shows Plato seated at the scene in despair. In the _Phaedo_, Plato says he aws sick and not there."

[Maya Lin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Lin?wprov=sfti1)

"Horace dictated that a writer should set aside a finished poem for nine years. And only then decide if it is worth publishing."

"Unquestionably it would have been Mary Magdalen who did the dishes at the Last Supper. Concluded Marguerite Yourcenar."

[Bohemianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism)

[Lully](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Lully?wprov=sfti1) died from gangrene, having struck his foot with his long conducting staff during a performance of his Te Deum to celebrate Louis XIV's recovery from surgery. He refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance.

"The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time. Said Einstein."

"Mithridates. Who as Housman says took poison in small doses, to build an immunity. And was run through by a sword."

[Heinrich von Kleist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_von_Kleist?wprov=sfti1): On November 21, 1811, the two traveled from Berlin to Wannsee. Prior to their departure, they both penned farewell letters, which along with an account of the final night they spent at the inn Gasthof Stimming, are now part of world literature. Upon their arrival in the vicinity of the Wannsee in Potsdam, Kleist first shot Henriette and then turned the gun on himself. They were buried together in a common grave at Kleine Wannsee (Bismarckstrasse), which has become a tourist attraction. 

"Bertrand Russell, _re_ having contemplated suicide at sixteen: I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more about mathematics."

"During his interlude with George Sand, Alfred de Musset more than once woke up not long after exhausting sex to find her gone from bed. Intently at work on a novel."

"Et Verbum caro factum est: And the Word was made flesh"

"Our life is but a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn -Marcus Aurelius"

"'[Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!](http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Come_Back_to_the_Raft_Ag%27in%2C_Huck_Honey%21)' argued a recurrent theme in American literature was an unspoken or implied homoerotic relationship between men, famously using Huckleberry Finn and Jim as examples. Pairs of men flee for wilderness rather than remain in the civilizing and domesticated world of women."

"Michelangelo finished _The Last Judgement_ in 1541. Fourteen years later Pope Paul IV ordered Daniele da Volterra to drape forty of the naked figures. Which Salvator Rosa would subsequently suggest made the whole wall look like a public bath."

"Sweet the nails, sweet the wood 
<br/>
Which bore so sweet a burden"

"Then we will have Homer and _Don Quixote_, and then we will have saunter and chat, and one more laugh before we die. Said William Cowper, who was mad through most of his life."

"One does not finish a poem, one only abandons it."

[Jacqueline du Pré](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_yxtaeFuEQ&feature=youtu.be)

----

["Trees" (1913)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trees_(poem))

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

----

[In Flanders Fields (1915)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Flanders_Fields?wprov=sfti1)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields. 

-----

Pieces from Sohrab Sepehri's poems:

<div class="lang-fa">

روزگاری است در این گوشه پژمرده هوا
<br />
هر نشاطی مرده است.
<br />

<br />
..
<br />

با درون سوخته دارم سخن.
<br />
کی به پایان می‌رسد افسانه‌ام؟
<br />

<br />
..
<br />

گرچه می‌سوزم از این آتش به جان،
<br />
لیک بر این سوختن دل بسته‌ام.
<br />
<br />

تیرگی پا می‌کشد از بام‌ها:
<br />
صبح می‌خندد به راه شهر من.
<br />
دود می خیزد هنوز از خلوتم.
<br />
با درون سوخته دارم سخن.
<br />

<br />
..
<br />

راه فرو بسته گرچه مرغ به آوا،
<br />
قالب خاموشی او صدایی گویاست.
<br />
می‌گذرد لحظه‌ها به چشمش بیدار،
<br />
پیکر او لیک سایه-روشن رویاست.

</div>

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Bill Murray: "I think if you can take care of yourself, and then maybe try to take care of someone else, that's sort of how you're supposed to live."

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[Fatalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism)

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Once upon a time there was a king, then a few dress makers offered to make him a dress that only noble and decent people could see. King really liked the idea and ordered them to make a coat for him. They start sewing their seemingly magical material, meanwhile no one actually sees anything, they look as if they are sewing on the air. They are finished with the coat at last and they carefully put it on the king. The king doesn’t see the dress himself, but because he doesn’t want to be found out to be not noble or decent, he starts praising the coat and pays them. Everyone in the palace also praised the dress in the fear of being found as not noble. Even people on street praise the coat of the king. I feel like someone once said Love and made a big deal out of his fantasy of being with someone and everyone else, in fear of being called weirdos just followed along and now we live in a world obsessed with love even though they can’t hold it together most of times 

----

In 1845, the Illustrated London News reported that a Newfoundland dog had been acting less lively over a period of days before being seen "to throw himself in the water and endeavor to sink by preserving perfect stillness of the legs and feet". Every time he was rescued he attempted to do this again before he finally held his head underwater until death. [source](https://web.archive.org/web/20150326032017/http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/animal-suicide-behavior.htm)

----