Latest Posts by chaotichandle - Page 2

I'm not gonna sit here and pretend to know what makes us who we are, but I gotta figure it's more than just the sum of what we remember.

Forest Creatures by Maéna Paillet

Always Deflect, Never Reflect

Imagine being so deep in denial about your own blunders

That every misstep you take feels like an attack against you,

Rather than a consequence of your own actions.

Every time you do wrong, it’s never your fault;

It’s the fault of those who noticed, those who reacted,

Those who dared to hold you accountable, albeit in a subtle way.

It's the fault of the press for criticizing,

Not the official for his serial corruption

You turn every consequence into a conspiracy,

Every criticism into cruelty,

Never once admitting that the damage began with you.

But reactions are human instinct—

And accountability could be, too, if only you’d accept it.

Every action comes with a reaction—whether you like it or not.

- Yvonne

Michelangelo Antonioni

"Don’t court Loneliness", Tathev Simonyan

“I know the secret of life isn’t in books. But I also know that it’s good to read, that it can be instructive, or relaxing: we agree about that.”

— Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper

“I know that feeling. You have to do something. You have to change something radically, because you can’t stay like you are for another second, or you’re going to explode.”

— Jennifer Echols, Forget You

'Aerea Targaryen' by Audrey Benjaminsen.

Illustration from The Folio Society edition of 'Fire And Blood' written by George RR Martin, published January 2025.

“There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.”

— Khalil Gibran

The bells and other poems - Edgar Allan Poe, Edmund Dulac, ill. - 1912 - via Internet Archive

Look deeply in my eyes; a twin mirrors of dusk. Beware of the melancholy in them.

Wikipedia / Image from pinterest / Machiavelli / George Santayana / Thucydides / Image from pinterest / Abba - Waterloo / J. M. Barrie - Peter Pan / Fibonacci spiral / Catherynne M. Valente

Stanley Kubrick

𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒔. 𝑰𝒕'𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒔.

“Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Let me be sad, it is the only way I know how to squeeze out the last drop of happiness, and then I won’t suffer as much later on.

Pedro Lemebel, My Tender Matador (translated by Katherine Silver)

via

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:

This place made from our love for that emptiness

Yet somehow comes emptiness,

this existence goes.

Praise to that happening, over and over!

For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,

that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,

free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw

blown off into emptiness.

These words I’m saying so much begin to lose meaning:

Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept

out the window, down the slant of the roof.

“The answer is not coming. I have to find an arbitrary point inside the spell of waiting, the open absence, and tear myself away. Leave, with no answer. Move on to the next question.”

— Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers