THURSDAY, 13 APRIL 2006
I sometimes feel like a puppet whose mind has been activated (the idea comes from a book by Fritz Leiber, You’re All Alone): intelligent enough to see what I see, yet incapable of knowing or understanding the full truth, trapped in a shadowy half-life.
What advice would I offer to someone in my position?
I would say, take what you do know and understand, and aim to achieve results of your existence that are more positive than negative.
I reckon that’s good enough for a person trapped in the twilight, right?
WEDNESDAY, 19 APRIL 2006
Yesterday I had this idea that if people talk to me, and their requests or opinions are not reasonable, I would simply ignore everything they say, a kind of delete-the-sounds-from-my-short-term-memory kind of judgment.
This morning I reconsidered: Sometimes people simply need to express themselves when they make a request, or when they state an opinion or make a statement. Sometimes all you need to do is listen.
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Any need a person has – for food, sleep, love, sex, creative fulfilment or financial success – has to do with silencing something. This “silence” we strive for is to be in a completely relaxed state, to go into a state that in extreme form is associated with either pre-birth, or death.
THURSDAY, 20 APRIL 2006
Every person’s “world” is like a circle – complete and, to a large extent, closed. Within this circle of people, values, understanding, and so forth his or her daily life plays out.
I am currently reading a book set in 1988 South Africa, with the main character portrayed as a good guy from the security police. The book serves as an example of a complete circle within which things made sense and within which things were ordered in a particular way. It also serves as a Document of a Particular Historical and Cultural Context – in the same way Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment serves as a document of the particular historical and cultural context that was St. Petersburg in the 1860s.
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