Looking at the looked at

The art of looking - “Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.”

Her approach is based on two osmotic human tendencies: our shared capacity to truly see what is in front of us, despite our conditioned concentration that obscures it, and the power of individual bias in perception — or what we call “expertise,” acquired by passion or training or both — in bringing attention to elements that elude the rest of us. What follows is a whirlwind of endlessly captivating exercises in attentive bias as Horowitz, with her archetypal New Yorker’s “special fascination with the humming life-form that is an urban street,” and her diverse companions take to the city.

A better way of thinking about attention is to consider the problems that evolution might have designed “attention” to solve. The first problem emerges from the nature of the world. The world is wildly distracting. It is full of brightly colored things, large things casting shadows, quickly moving things, approaching things, loud things, irregular things, smelly things.

From sensory consciousness to cerebral understanding, to reason.

It is all the same way and it leads nowhere, when you realize nothing has any default purpose to lead anywhere, is when you feel the 'unbearable lightness of being'

 

They do not hail from pedigreed families, and like him cannot, through traditional political clout or monetary brawn, buy immunity from our wag the dog media or the prison cell.

Many mathematicians, when pressed, admit to being Platonists. The great logician Kurt Gödel argued that mathematical concepts and ideas “form an objective reality of their own, which we cannot create or change, but only perceive and describe.” But if this is true, how do humans manage to access this hidden reality?

This may strike you as very unlikely. But the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued that we are more likely to be in such a simulation than not. If such simulations are possible in theory, he reasons, then eventually humans will create them — presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than nonsimulated ones. Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/is-the-universe-a-simulation.html?src=me&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Most%20Emailed&pgtype=article

With the question of absolution, Critchley and Webster usher Hegel’s Romantic philosophy of the Absolute onto the stage. Hegel sees Shakespeare’s characters as “free artists of their own selves,” choosing who they are. In consequence, Shakespeare’s characters lack an absolute moral framework to justify their choices, leaving them existentially indecisive, torn by “a twofold passion which drives them from one decision or one deed to another simultaneously.” Hamlet ends by happenstance, a series of accidental deaths by poison, so while Hegel’s philosophy sees existence developing steadily toward the Absolute, a form of divine unity, Hamlet remains trapped in a contingent, fallen world. With this, we glimpse the “Hamlet Doctrine,” the melancholic knowledge of brute reality that smothers all will to act.

 

Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion — that is the Hamlet Doctrine, not that cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer who reflects too much and, as it were, from an excess of possibilities does not get around to action. Not reflection, no — true knowledge, the insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action, both in Hamlet and in the Dionysian man. […] 

 “Existence seems to us ever more screened and distanced,” Critchley and Webster write, “an empty empathy for a suffering that we do nothing to stop and everything to abet in our passivity, dispersal, and narcissism. None of us is free of this. Maybe art, in its essential violence, can tear away one or two of these screens.”

 

Robert Anton Wilson described ego as social fiction with a qualification

How does one live antiartistically, like Ophelia, in the modern world? Do we have to go suicidally insane? Rend ourselves at the “limit between life and death”? Critchley and Webster never say. But Nietzsche, the madman they pair with Ophelia, might help us see the way. In Beyond Good and Evil, he writes that believing in illusions is of “the highest value for all life.” “Untruth,” Nietzsche says, is “a condition of life.” We recall Hamlet’s call to the Ghost, “Stay illusion,” alongside Nietzsche’s claim that “action requires the veils of illusion.” If art is “a saving sorceress,” “the affirmation of life” after we peer into the abyss of our violent world, then art both rends the veil of illusions, revealing “true knowledge,” and weaves the veil back into place, replacing our illusions and thus enabling us to act.

"All claims by public persons to be apolitical deserve critical scrutiny, and all claims made by those who affect merely a 'spiritual' influence deserve a doubly critical scrutiny. The naive and simple are seldom as naive and simple as they seem, and this suspicion is reinforced by those who proclaim their own naivete and simplicity. There is no conceit equal to false modesty, and there is no politics like anti-politics, just as there is no worldliness to compare with ostentatious anti-materialism."- Christopher Hitchens: The Missionary Position

Love

I have infinite tenderness for you. I always will. All my life long.

Look at yourself like you are a love story, I said. 
This is self-indulgence, he said. 
Self-preservation, I said.

" I LOVE YOUR SILENCES, THEY ARE LIKE MINE. YOU ARE THE ONLY BEING BEFORE WHOM I AM NOT DISTRESSED BY MY OWN SILENCES. YOU HAVE A VEHEMENT SILENCE, ONE FEELS IT IS CHARGED WITH ESSENCES, IT IS A STRANGELY ALIVE SILENCE, LIKE A TRAP OPEN OVER A WELL, FROM WHICH ONE CAN HEAR THE SECRET MURMUR OF THE EARTH ITSELF. "

by Anaïs Nin, Under the Glass Jar

 

" BEING AN ARTIST MEANS FOREVER HEALING YOUR OWN WOUNDS AND AT THE SAME TIME ENDLESSLY EXPOSING THEM. "
" HOW WONDERFUL IT IS, TO BE SILENT WITH SOMEONE. "

YOU RARE GIRL, ONCE AGAIN, YOU HAVE A BODY THAT BELONGS TO NO LOVER, TO NO FATHER, BELONGS TO NO ONE BUT YOU. WEAR YOUR SORROW LIKE THE LINES ON YOUR PALM. LIKE A SHAWL TO KEEP YOU WARM AT NIGHT. DON’T MOURN THE LOVE THAT IS LOST TO YOU NOW. IT IS A BOOK OF POEMS WHOSE METERS WORKED THEIR WAY INTO YOUR PULSE. EVEN IF IT HAS SLIPPED FROM YOUR HANDS, IT WILL STAY IN YOUR BODY.
YOU LOVED A MAN WHO TREATED YOU LIKE ABSINTHE, HALF POISON AND HALF GOD. HE TRIED TO SWEETEN YOU, TO WATER YOU DOWN. SO YOU LEFT. AND NOW YOU HAVE YOUR HEART ALL TO YOURSELF AGAIN. A HEART LIKE A STONE COTTAGE. HEART LIKE A LOVER’S DIARY. HOPE LIKE AN OCEAN."

by Letter From Anais Nin to Clementine von Radics

. THERE WILL BE SOME DAYS WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES WHILE CROSSING THE STREET, MAYBE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT FATE HAS IN STORE FOR YOU, OR MAYBE BECAUSE YOUR DEPRESSION IS RUNNING RAMPANT AGAIN AND YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO CALM HER. IT’S OKAY. I WILL STILL LOVE YOU.
2. THERE WILL BE A YEAR, OR A SERIES OF YEARS WHEN YOUR BIRTHDAY DOESN’T FEEL SPECIAL. CELEBRATE ANYWAY. BECAUSE PEOPLE SPENT TIME BAKING YOU A CAKE AND BUYING YOU CARDS AND EVEN IF THEY’RE YOUR FAMILY AND THEY’RE OBLIGATED TO, THEY STILL LOVE YOU. CHERISH THAT LOVE. REVEL IN IT. IT IS THE BEST GIFT YOU WILL EVER RECEIVE.
3. YOU WILL LEARN THAT THE SADDEST WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS STAY. WHETHER IT’S YOUR MOTHER’S VOICE WHISPERING IT BEFORE YOU LEAVE FOR COLLEGE, OR YOUR EX-LOVER’S DESPERATE SCREAMS AS YOU WALK OUT OF THE HOUSE, IT WILL ALWAYS BE A HARD WORD TO HEAR. SOMETIMES YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO IT, OTHER TIMES YOU SHOULDN’T. TRUST YOURSELF. GO WITH YOUR GUT.
4. ALONG WITH HEARING THE WORD STAY, YOU WILL ALSO HEAR THE WORD WHY FROM EVERY PERSON WHO IS REMOTELY RELATED TO YOU. WHY DID YOU GET THAT TATTOO? WHY DID YOU TRY TO KILL YOURSELF? WHY AREN’T YOU MARRIED YET? YOU DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER THEM. BE SELFISH. KEEP SOMETHINGS TO YOURSELF.
5. SOME NIGHTS YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO SLEEP. YOU WILL LIE AWAKE AT 2 AM AND CONTEMPLATE EXISTENTIALISM AND WONDER IF THE FRENCH HAD A POINT. GET UP. GET OUT OF YOUR BED. DO SOMETHING. BECAUSE EVEN IF THERE IS NO GOD, WHAT YOU DO MATTERS, WHO YOU ARE MATTERS. YOU MATTER TO ME.
6. SOME DAYS YOU WILL WANT TO RUN AWAY AND NEVER RETURN. SO GO. DRIVE TO A SMALL TOWN IN THE NORTHWEST, MAYBE OREGON, AND SETTLE DOWN THERE FOR A WHILE. TELL PEOPLE YOUR NAME IS ELIZABETH, BECAUSE YOU LOVED JANE AUSTEN AS A CHILD AND BECAUSE THIS A TOWN FULL OF STRANGERS AND WHO’S TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE? DON’T BE SELFISH. CALL YOUR MOTHER EACH NIGHT AND REMIND HER THAT YOU LOVE HER. COME BACK HOME WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF SEEING YOUR SADNESS PAINTED IN THE SHADOWS, AND WHEN YOU FEEL MORE AT HOME IN THE ARMS OF A STRANGER THAN ON YOUR OWN.
7. THERE WILL BE SEVERAL NIGHTS WHEN YOU LOSE YOURSELF IN THE MEDICINE CABINET, BECAUSE LIQUOR AND MORPHINE SEEM LIKE A FASTER CURE THAN TIME. IT’S OKAY. I WILL STILL LOVE YOU IN THE MORNING.
8. ONE DAY, IN THE MIDST OF WORK, YOU WILL LEARN TO FORGIVE. IT WILL START OUT WITH A SIMPLE REMINDER OF THE PAST, MAYBE A FACEBOOK NOTIFICATION FROM AN OLD SCHOOLMATE OR A WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENT FROM AN EX-LOVER. IN THAT MOMENT YOU WILL LEARN THAT YEARNING FOR THE PAST ISN’T ROMANTIC, IT’S STUPID, AND THAT IF GATSBY HAD JUST LET GO OF THE GREEN LIGHT HE WOULD’VE LIVED. SO FORGIVE YOUR PAST, IT DIDN’T KNOW ANY BETTER, AND MOVE ON.
9. LEAVING HOME WILL HURT, BUT SOON YOU WILL LEARN THAT HOME ISN’T A PLACE BUT A FEELING, AND THAT THERE IS A COMPASS ON YOUR HEART THAT POINTS DIRECTLY TO THAT FEELING. FOLLOW THAT COMPASS. DON’T GET SIDETRACKED BY BOYS WHO DON’T CARE OR ALCOHOL THAT DOESN’T FORGIVE. IF YOU FOLLOW THAT COMPASS, NO MATTER HOW LOST YOU GET, YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE A HOME.
10. THE HARDEST LESSON YOU WILL EVER LEARN WILL BE TO LOVE YOURSELF. BUT YOU CAN DO IT. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE DAYS WHEN YOU HATE YOURSELF, DAYS WHEN YOU WISH YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN. BUT DARLING YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, AND IF SHAKESPEARE HAD MET YOU YOU WOULD’VE INSPIRED HIS 18TH SONNET, AND IF MONET HAD KNOWN YOU HE WOULD’VE GIVEN UP PAINTING WATER LILIES AND CHOSEN TO PAINT YOU INSTEAD. I KNOW IT’S HARD TO LOVE YOURSELF, BUT SOMETIMES IT’S OKAY TO BE A LITTLE SELFISH WITH YOUR LOVE.
11. WHEN YOU BEGIN TO FEEL WORTHLESS, REMEMBER THAT THE STARS DIED FOR YOU. YOU ARE MADE OF ELEMENTS THAT ARE THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD, ELEMENTS THAT MAKE UP EVERY ATOM OF YOUR BEING. WHEN YOU WANT TO CUT YOUR WRISTS, REMEMBER THAT THE SOULS OF STARS LIVE IN YOUR VEINS. DON’T KILL THEM. DON’T BE SELFISH.
12. SOME DAYS WILL BE BEAUTIFUL. LIVE FOR THOSE DAYS. LIVE FOR THE DAYS WHEN THE SUN SHINES ON YOUR SOUL AND THE SMILE ON YOUR FACE ISN’T FORCED. LIVE FOR THE DAYS WHEN YOU DON’T GIVE A FUCK WHAT ANYONE THINKS BECAUSE YOUR SCARS ARE A PART OF YOUR STORY AND YOU DON’T NEED SOMEONE ELSE’S APPROVAL TO WEAR THEM WITH PRIDE.
LIVE FOR THE LIFE YOU ALWAYS WANTED BUT WERE TOO SCARED TO PURSUE.
LIVE FOR YOU. LIVE FOR ME. LIVE FOR EVERY PERSON WHO HAS EVER LOVED YOU, FOR THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE COME BEFORE YOU SO THAT YOU MAY BE HERE TODAY.
LIVE FOR THE FIRE THAT BURNS IN YOUR SOUL, THAT TELLS YOU: KEEP GOING, YOU’RE ALMOST THERE, JUST A LITTLE FARTHER. BECAUSE WHEN ROME BURNED DOWN THE EMPEROR DIDN’T RUN AWAY, HE STAYED AND HE SANG FOR HIS PEOPLE. STAY. SING FOR YOUR PEOPLE. SING FOR US.
ARE YOU LISTENING? BECAUSE THIS IS YOUR LIFE, SINGING A SIREN SONG TO CAPTURE YOUR ATTENTION AND STEER AWAY FROM THE ROCKS, TO GUIDE YOU BACK HOME."

by The Twelve-Step Program for Life, by M.K. 

" THAT’S WHY SHE’S IN LOVE WITH YOU, YOU KNOW…THERE WERE A LOT OF OTHER BOYS, BUT THEY DIDN’T SCARE HER. SHE RATHER FRIGHTENED THEM, I THINK. YOU’RE VERY DIFFERENT. BUT I THINK YOU FRIGHTENED HER, AND THAT’S WHY SHE LIKES YOU. "

by Aurelia Plath, Sylvia

" THOUGH I AM OFTEN IN THE DEPTHS OF MISERY, THERE IS STILL CALMNESS, PURE HARMONY AND MUSIC INSIDE ME. I SEE PAINTINGS OR DRAWINGS IN THE POOREST COTTAGES, IN THE DIRTIEST CORNERS. AND MY MIND IS DRIVEN TOWARDS THESE THINGS WITH AN IRRESISTIBLE MOMENTUM. "

by Vincent van Gogh 

" BUT LET THERE BE SPACE IN YOUR TOGETHERNESS,
AND LET THE WINDS OF THE HEAVENS DANCE BETWEEN YOU.
LOVE ONE ANOTHER, BUT MAKE NOT A BOND OF LOVE:
LET IT RATHER BE A MOVING SEA BETWEEN THE SHORES OF YOUR SOULS.
FILL EACH OTHER’S CUP BUT DRINK NOT FROM ONE CUP. 
GIVE ONE ANOTHER OF YOUR BREAD BUT EAT NOT FROM THE SAME LOAF.
SING AND DANCE TOGETHER AND BE JOYOUS, 
BUT LET EACH ONE OF YOU BE ALONE, 
EVEN AS THE STRINGS OF A LUTE ARE ALONE THOUGH THEY QUIVER WITH THE SAME MUSIC. "

by Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

" YOU MUST LOVE IN SUCH A WAY THAT THE PERSON YOU LOVE FEELS FREE. "

by Thich Nhat Hanh

" ORDINARY LIFE DOES NOT INTEREST ME. I SEEK ONLY THE HIGH MOMENTS. I AM IN ACCORD WITH THE SURREALISTS, SEARCHING FOR THE MARVELOUS. "

by Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anaïs Nin

 

" HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY LOVE HER? YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HER FAVORITE BOOK. "
EVERY DAY THEY WANT YOU TO SHRINK:
FIT HERE, IN MY PALM, IN MY SHADOW, DON’T BE BIGGER THAN MY IDEA OF YOU, DON’T BE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN I CAN ACCEPT, DON’T BE MORE HUMAN THAN I AM WILLING TO ALLOW YOU TO BE AND BE QUIET, YOU’RE TOO LOUD, EVEN YOUR UNBELONGING IS LOUD. QUIET YOUR DREAMS, YOUR VOICE, YOUR HAIR, QUIET YOUR SKIN, QUIET YOUR DISPLACEMENT, QUIET YOUR LONGING, YOUR COLOUR, QUIET YOUR WALK, YOUR EYES. WHO SAID YOU COULD LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT? WHO SAID YOU COULD EXIST WITHOUT PERMISSION? WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE? WHY AREN’T YOU SHRINKING? I THINK OF YOU OFTEN. YOU VIBRATE. YOU WALK INTO A ROOM AND THE TEMPERATURE CHANGES. I LEAN IN AND ALMOST RECOGNISE YOU AS HUMAN. BUT, NO. WE CAN’T HAVE THAT."
by Warsan Shire, Be Small For Me. 

STOP ACTING SO SMALL. YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE IN ECSTATIC MOTION.

I DO NOT LOVE YOU AS IF YOU WERE SALT-ROSE, OR TOPAZ,
OR THE ARROW OF CARNATIONS THE FIRE SHOOTS OFF.
I LOVE YOU AS CERTAIN DARK THINGS ARE TO BE LOVED,
IN SECRET, BETWEEN THE SHADOW AND THE SOUL.
I LOVE YOU AS THE PLANT THAT NEVER BLOOMS
BUT CARRIES IN ITSELF THE LIGHT OF HIDDEN FLOWERS;
THANKS TO YOUR LOVE A CERTAIN SOLID FRAGRANCE,
RISEN FROM THE EARTH, LIVES DARKLY IN MY BODY.
I LOVE YOU WITHOUT KNOWING HOW, OR WHEN, OR FROM WHERE.
I LOVE YOU STRAIGHTFORWARDLY, WITHOUT COMPLEXITIES OR PRIDE;
SO I LOVE YOU BECAUSE I KNOW NO OTHER WAY
THAN THIS: WHERE I DOES NOT EXIST, NOR YOU,
SO CLOSE THAT YOUR HAND ON MY CHEST IS MY HAND,
SO CLOSE THAT YOUR EYES CLOSE AS I FALL ASLEEP."

by XVII (I do not love you…), Pablo Neruda

 SOCIETY, AS WE HAVE CONSTITUTED IT, WILL HAVE NO PLACE FOR ME, HAS NONE TO OFFER; BUT NATURE, WHOSE SWEET RAINS FALL ON UNJUST AND JUST ALIKE, WILL HAVE CLEFTS IN THE ROCKS WHERE I MAY HIDE, AND SECRET VALLEYS IN WHOSE SILENCE I MAY WEEP UNDISTURBED. SHE WILL HANG THE NIGHT WITH STARS SO THAT I MAY WALK ABROAD IN THE DARKNESS WITHOUT STUMBLING, AND SEND THE WIND OVER MY FOOTPRINTS SO THAT NONE MAY TRACK ME TO MY HURT: SHE WILL CLEANSE ME IN THE GREAT WATERS, AND WITH BITTER HERBS MAKE ME WHOLE. "
 Oscar Wilde

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile in my head, I'm undergoing open-heart surgery. - Anne Sexton.

176"I am violently susceptible to all sorts of separate feelings." - Virginia Woolf, from Selected Letters

297"We weep together
and make a bed for rain." - Frida Kahlo, from The Diary Of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

264"…but I know you wanted me to be there.
Every look that you threw told me so." -  Sinéad O’Connor, from Troy

279"My words are the garment of what I shall never be." - W.S. Merwin, from When You Go Away

378"…and you are like the word: Melancholy." - Pablo Neruda, from I Like For You To Be Still

727"I no longer love her, true, 
but perhaps I love her." - Pablo Neruda

…I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved.
" - Louise Glück, from First Memory