RainyCoast

“In his hopeless struggle with the power of society, the individual seeks to avert his own destruction by identifying with that power and then rationalizing the change of direction as authentic individual fulfillment. The impotent petitioner becomes the tragic panegyrist.” — Theodore Adorno, In Search of Wagner

“Hence I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.” — Malcolm

“It is clear that the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another.” — George Bataille, 1931

Giant raccoons are particularly hilarious. VIRUS

He’d sent letters to Offler, Om, and Blind Io, all important gods, and also to Anoia, a minor goddess of Things That Stick In Drawers.* *Often, but not uniquely, a ladle, but sometimes a metal spatula or, rarely, a mechanical egg-whisk that nobody in the house admits to ever buying. The desperate, mad rattling and cries of “How can it close on the damn thing but not open with it? Who bought this? Do we ever use it?” is as praise unto Anoia. She also eats corkscrews. – on Anoia | Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

ideology always produces a “fullness”, not an absence, or void or lack. If there happens to be something like a void, we therefore have to be prepared to find it covered up by a fullness”, Robert Pfaller

There are figures of social authority (parents, athletes, film stars, presidents), but there is no social authority as such. No one, in other words, knows the secret of social order or how one might fully belong to it,” says McGowan on Lacan saying the big Other does not exist.

Capitalism’s deception consists in convincing us, as it convinces Deleuze and Guattari, that desire can transcend its failures and overcome all barriers. We don’t need more desire, but rather the recognition that the barrier is what we desire,” Todd McGowan

Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another, that is, it exists only in being acknowledged — Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“(…) love is always hopeless, and yet hope belongs only to it. This is the ultimate meaning of the myth of Pandora. The fact that hope, as the final gift, remains in the box means that it does not expect its factual accomplishment in the world- not because it postpones its fulfillment to an invisible beyond but because somehow it has always already been satisfied. Love hopes because it imagines and imagines because it hopes. What does it hope for? Does it hope to be satisfied? Not really, since hope and the imagination are essentially linked with something unsatisfiable. This is the case not because they do not desire to obtain their object, but because, insofar as it is imagined and hoped for, their desire is always already satisfied.” - Giorgio Agamben, The Adventure.

September 1968. “The other day I noticed Beckett along one of the footpaths in the Luxembourg Gardens, reading a newspaper in a way that reminded me of one of his characters. He was seated in a chair, lost in thought, as he usually is. He looked rather unwell. I didn’t dare approach him. What would I say? I like him so much but it’s better that we not speak. He is so discreet! Conversation is a form of play-acting that requires a certain lack of restraint. It’s a game which Beckett wasn’t made for. Everything about him bespeaks a silent monologue.” From Cioran, Cahiers 1957-1972

Is it PMS or am I actually dying this time

I dreamed about you visiting all night. I liked how you cut those ropes. I kept retreating back into the events of the dream all day. It was greatly consoling to have you visit. Thank you. I keep stubbornly retreating back into silence as well. It still seems, the less said, the better. I kept wanting to go back home with you in the dream. It's been that way for years now. I was surprised a bit nevertheless, that I was willing to pack up and leave everything behind. But it's something i've been wishing I could do. I loved how green those vinyards were. Sometimes I wonder, when I'm very sick and on my way out, what will my mind do with all this excess of life, that makes the dreamscapes, the thought matter, the sudden intrusions of past so bright and animated, singing and effusive. I think that must make a mind brake, once one is fragile enough. Imagine, my vivid, luscious madness then. You all gave me...a life too alive. Like some pommegranate, bursting open.

Unlearning is extremely painful, because you’re giving up your object. And I believe in pedagogy—I’m fundamentally a teacher. But I think teaching is really difficult, because the things you’re trying to get people to unlearn are things they hold close, and that are forms of life for them that structure their sense of continuity. Because learning and unlearning happen at the same time, there ought to be a lot of grace in the space of pedagogy. Cruel Optimism is about how people will stay in relation to their object even if it destroys them, because they can’t bear giving up the pleasure of knowing the world in a particular way. So yes, unlearning is very painful because it means you have to experience a kind of complexity about moving through the world that you didn’t have before. And that’s very abstract, but it’s not abstract when you’re losing something. Lauren Berlant in conversation with Bea Malsky, “Pleasure Won: A Conversation with Lauren Berlant,” The Point Magazine

“A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.” ―Stephen Crane, War Is Kind and Other Poems

The shortest route from wonder to wonder is loss. — Richard Kearney

“a too strong identity with too much identification represses the “appetite to be unlike the self one takes oneself to be” - A. Phillips “… This is to say that Man does not change himself and transform the World for himself in order to realize a conformity to an “ideal” given to him (imposed by God, or simply “innate”). He creates and creates himself because he negates and negates himself “without a preconceived idea”: he becomes other solely because he no longer wants to be the same. And it is only because he no longer wants to be what he is that what he will be or will be able to be is an “ideal” for him, “justifying” his negating or creative action—i.e., his change—by giving it a “meaning.” —Alexandre Kojève

“To retreat into nostalgia is to flee one’s own freedom,” - Todd McGowan

Today’s men and women – who are stress-ridden and eager to achieve, to spend money, have fun, and die – dispense with the representation of their experience that we call psychic life… We have neither the time nor the space needed to create a soul for ourselves, and the mere hint of such activity seems frivolous and ill-advised. — Julia Kristeva, New Maladies of the Soul

Ok but did you see that mum?! I know you saw that. Un fricking believable. well I got to the being angry part at last. So flippin angry. my chest is pounding with fury and disgust. This is how I lose all respect for them. I can't sleep this furious. Hey know the upside. That did it. That was the straw. I don't friggin want aaaaaanything any more. Nope, nope, nope. Disgusted. Actually, maybe I CAN sleep. Why wouldn't I, none of this #!&/ is on me. # that #. I don't want it. I'm way too frikkin good for this.