To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarate, and the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning it into a slumber. The other arts make no such retreat — some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
This isn’t the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, and a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings in a languages that no one uses, because no one talks in verse.
Rightsizing life
The reduction of ambition rightsizes one’s life. All of a sudden, those magnetic forces, trophies, hefty pocket books, and rich attractions lose their lure. All the stylization and mimetic desire mean little. The sheep collective drown in the waterfall of white fountains. What matters is cultivating a satisfaction with fomo that becomes intrinsic. The reward…
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