#ai

What was I supposed to do then I wondered. Was there even a supposed-to for this kind of situation? A situation when when I looked at my receding past everything seemed retrospectively marked by an extreme order and predictability yet all moments since seemed to obey, and promised to continue obeying, their own set of stochastic, undisclosed, and undiscoverable laws. Where I was fully aware of the pitfalls and folly of a finely-tuned narcissism but still the known universe seemed to bend and bend inexorably inward and towards me where it awaited my next move, supremely ready to react accordingly. And how I knew that decisions I would soon make or defer would have near-Sophoclean import and yet nonetheless it all seemed oddly irrelevant. ↗

— Sergio De La Pava

#future #life #past #retrospective #uncertainly

Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition. ↗

— Florida Scott-Maxwell

#better #container #destroys #does #else

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. ↗

— Henry Ward Beecher

#cannot #faults #friend #friendship #him

You can't run away from trouble. There ain't no place that far. ↗

— Uncle Remus

#living #there-ain-t-no-place-that-far #trouble #you-can-t-run-from-trouble #life

The months roll by like wheels on a wheelchair. Pretty soon it’ll be July. Feels like just last month it was May.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#life #may #months #time #wheelchair

The only real failure in life is giving up. On looking back let it stand to our credit in life's balance sheet that at least we tried, and tried hard. ↗

— A.G. Street

#life

I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots—written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements—and found that they called themselves Gush Emunim or—it sounded just as bad in English—'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they took the land because god had given it to them from time immemorial. In the noisome town of Hebron, where all of life is focused on a supposedly sacred boneyard in a dank local cave, one of the world's less pretty sights is that of supposed yeshivah students toting submachine guns and humbling the Arab inhabitants. When I asked one of these charmers where he got his legal authority to be a squatter, he flung his hand, index finger outstretched, toward the sky. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#belarus #colonialism #god #guns #gush-emunim

It's not easy to diagnose because depending where the endometrial deposits are, the symptoms can be quite different. It's an unrecognized problem among teenage girls, and it's something that every young woman who has painful menstruation should be aware of ... it's a condition that is curable if it's caught early. If not, if it's allowed to run on, it can cause infertility, and it can really mess up your life. [Author Hilary Mantel on being asked about being a writer with endometriosis, Nov 2012 NPR interview] ↗

— Hilary Mantel

#chronic-pain #endometriosis #feminism #feminist #healthcare

I love to see those paragliders weaving softly around Moon Point, their legs floating above you in the air. When they drift in for a landing, their feet touch the ground and they trot forward from the continued motion of the glider, which billows down like a setting sun. I never get tired of watching them and I've seen them thousands of times. I always wondered what that kind of freedom would feel like. ↗

— Deb Caletti

#freedom #paraglider #sun #freedom

A belief is an absolute but arbitrary mental stance. ↗

— Will Bowen

#complaining #life