William Blake

Melakam Timket, guys!

I saw a shooting star a few minutes ago. A bright and gigantic one. No one else around me saw it, so I could be hallucinating. It only lasted a fraction of a second but it's the most beautiful thing! A beautiful ball of fire.

"I have such a desire to sleep and am so much behind in my sleep. A good night, one good
night and all this nonsense will be swept away."

-Nausea, Jean Paul Sartre

"Relax."
They tell me that everywhere I go. It's like I exude this profound air of anxiety. I went  to the Salon and the hair dresser reassured me three times. 3 whole times! I thought that might be his way of making everyone feel comfortable but he also asked me if I wasn't used to hair salons. May the Lord smite him dumb!😁

I wrote this little note in Novemeber because it bothered me. And today I found a similar sentiment written in Nora Ephron's Heartburn. Even the hairdresser part.

"People are always telling me to relax—the hairdresser tells me to relax, and the dentist, and the exercise teacher."
         -Heartburn, Nora Ephron

There's nothing new under the sun. Not the things that happen. Not the wordings we use to interpret them. Oh, well...
Anyways, it's a great book. Yanks you out of your reading slump.

This might be my best read of this year. It's interesting that the documentaries about Nora, even the best ones, make her out to be vengeful in how she handled the story of her cheating husband. But I find she was impossibly gracious and forgiving in the book. I'm in awe! Maybe the movie adaptation is colder, but I have yet to see it.

I feel a shift in the force. I don't know if I'm biased by recent news, I barely follow the news but I'm vaguely aware of what's going on around the world. I think we're on the brink of a global shift toward something. I don't know what that is specifically, but I see possibilities amid this whole political and technological chaos. Endless possibilities for the arts and humanities. I think when Nietzsche said that we have art in order not to die from reality, he didn't mean that art is merely an escape from reality-although it can be and rightfully so- but that art is a digestatble presentation of reality.

I think we need artists and we'll continue to need them. To catch the spirit of our time. To gather the rubbles of collapsed cultures and build something out of them. I think the pendulum will swing away from efficiency culture and it needs something meaningful and true when it reaches the other end if it's to spend a considerable time there. Oh, and I think the humanities will endure despite AI.

Yup, you're very right. Actually I think the fact that access to information makes the world seem like it's more chaotic than it is, is the exact reason that the world is in actuality getting more objectively chaotic. It's like an Ouroboros cycle in a way.

Culture is very much affected by perception. So a lot of cultures perceiving changes in places both across the world and right on their doorsteps near instantaneously, I think, increases the rate at which people are instigating change in their own cultures.

In our case there's Dagon's ruins "competing" too. 🙄

“A PERSON’S FAITH GOES AT ITS OWN PACE,” Owen
Meany said. “THE TROUBLE WITH CHURCH IS THE SERVICE. A SERVICE IS CONDUCTED FOR A MASS AUDIENCE. JUST WHEN I START TO LIKE THE HYMN, EVERYONE PLOPS DOWN TO PRAY. JUST WHEN I START TO HEAR THE PRAYER, EVERYONE POPS UP TO SING. AND WHAT DOES THE STUPID SERMON HAVE TO DO WITH GOD? WHO KNOWS WHAT GOD THINKS OF CURRENT EVENTS? WHO CARES?"
- A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving