Coherence As A Virtue Is Praised Too Much

the soft courage and freedom that darkness brings

𝙼𝚊𝚢 𝟸𝟾, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟶
 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚒𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝙾𝚏 𝙵𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚣 𝙺𝚊𝚏𝚔𝚊, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟶-𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟹

What is it called when certain moments of intense stress or panic cause you to fixate on a certain aspect of a thing and distort everything surrounding it in a very negative way and it’s as if that certain distortion changes almost everything thing about your perception itself? As if you have no tangible correlation to whatever is happening at the present moment and you are forced to observe yourself involuntarily perform an action you might not actively want to? A very persistent incoherence in your mind? Complete inability to concentrate on anything for more than ten minutes at maximum? Casually suicidal? As in overdosing on metformin because of a comparatively very trivial event?

What more foolish than to believe happiness is the ultimate ambition of a society whose very foundation is built upon a thwarted craving for meaning and its pillars insatisfaction ? Unhappiness and insufficiency are the driving forces behind economic expansion. The horror of contentment, the very notion of it is injurious to capitalism. So, in a way, a constant search for and accumulation of wealth is equated with success and to not deliriously overwork oneself in the name of ambition becomes failure, or as an excellently absurd term puts it ‘wasted potential’. Perhaps the implication here that any ability to create or produce is disqualified to be of any value unless it is yielded in a way enabling it to be monetised is collectively unacknowledged by society, or consciously endorsed. A bit of prodding into this brings one to the despaired question. What indeed is humankind’s core want? Or in other words, what would compel a thinking person to serve bureaucracy if their fundamental need were met and a decent standard of living provided?

Also another thing that bothers me is the quasi-philosophical belief that suffering is somehow superior to happiness in both meaning and virtue. The dreadfulness of pain masquerades as intellectualism and, to borrow a phrase from LeGuin, the banality of evil is wrapped up in folds of mystery. The ideology that ‘suffering should be endured for the potential of a reward later’ (and not to seek any meaning in itself, which, although questionable is a manifold better reason to engage in masochism) is one that is encouraged and spread by those in power. This is an abuse of religion and an exploitation of people’s values done more or less solely for the purpose of keeping people perceived beneath them in check. This state of affairs is more prevalent than it appears to be at first glance and is a disgrace to the few who actually work for the welfare of people. This has been a rant. Thank you.

Limerence is a word i have been looking for for a long time.

smokeinsilence / sightofsea / young love by bts / nizar qabbani / abeba birhane / the waves by virginia woolf / franz kafka letters to milena / ratsandlilies.art / the butterflys burden by mahmoud darwish / underneath the stars by mariah carey

Journal entries

25th June,

Pardon the hand that once wrote with astonishing impudence that sunsets were better than sunrises. I had woken early this morning with the sole purpose of watching the sun rise and stumbled drowsily up to the terrace, expecting a glaring orb of sunflower tints, but was pleasantly surprised when a golden and blue frenzy of cloud met my gaze. I caught my breath and spun around, inhaling all the delightful freshness of the dawn. The sky was entirely covered in a single expanse of white cloud, breaking away here and there to reveal some soft lavender or violent cobalt. I strolled over to a ledge and seated myself upon it, my foot dangling a few foot above the ground, preparing to lose myself in a reverie. The place where the mountains usually were was shrouded in a fog so thick that the only things visible were the glistening peaks of the far off valley. I found myself thinking of the sea, for the entire thing seemed to be an elaborate imitation of the ocean. In the indented wave of the soft white cloud, in the unpredictable changes of tint, in the light twinkling upon the slim corners of a half broken drift, in the glints of the half risen sun from behind a pale golden shroud, every where I turned, there it was. And the sun ascended leisurely, flooding the mist covered valley with a light that transformed the whole range into a dreamy golden harbour. I have fallen in love with gold, not the crude yellow of the metal, but this intoxicating hue which has now adorned the sky with its gorgeous shades. And so the prodigal son has returned, I whispered under my breath, as my eyes traced the path of a swallow across the scene. I looked at the sun until tears started to my eyes and I could no longer bear the scorching intensity of her gaze, whereupon an old friend of the squirrel tribe wandered across to say good morning and all was forgotten and I now sit here, as a cool breeze blows, twirling a loose strand of hair and writing.

“you can’t forget your mother tongue” okay but have you considered bilinguals and polyglots whose first language isn’t english and whose development during adolescence was shaped by consuming content and media only in english and have ever since viewed that second language, foreign to their own, as a better outlet for their emotions and thoughts? as Yiyun Li said “it is hard to feel in an adopted language, yet impossible in my native language.”