2021.09.21
Some synchronicity there in reading it now, decades, later- like one of the themes is listening to some of the big messages from our subconscious-self, our second-self, a concept which has been much on my mind as of late.
Why did I want to live in the Midwest anyway? Such a cultural throwback, unconscious of its own philistinism. "Out there they can't even spell the name of Mammon, which is just the way Mammon likes it."
Texts are tricky that way. Because you've read about philistines you may conclude that you can't be a philistine yourself.
Anyway, Uncle took to Fyodorov, whose position was that death lies behind all human problems. The earth is a graveyard and the one and only project of humanity is to reclaim it for life.
[The symbolist poet Andrei Bely] also said towards the end of his life, speaking of the women he had known, "Not a single one of them deserved me." I can't imagine Benn saying that. Those words, in his voice, would be impossible. And yet he might have been justified in saying it. So many modern thinkers agree that "overvaluation" is the secret of love.
God is a verb.
If you're afraid of loneliness don't marry.
Lev Navrozov, who is nobody's fool, says that for irrational and purely emotional behavior, America is in the twentieth century what Russia was in the nineteenth.
We human creatures should be at play before the Lord--the higher the play, the more pleasing to God.
"Let her sleep herself out. Nobody, in the ultimate sense, short of death, really gets the rest he needs."
The secret motive of the absentminded is to be innocent while guilty. Absentmindedness is spurious innocence.
The funny part was how rich she was in physical blessings. They counted for more than the disharmony of sexuality and stature. A bug from Mecca might have made a pilgrimage and crossed all of Asia and the whole Pacific just to take a bite of her.
"There are some who can't wait to get rid of themselves. Whereas others can't bear to let anybody go."
