a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

Helen Macdonald

I learned that to harden your heart was not the same as not caring.

Still, mostly it is the same.

I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing – not just from the wild, but from people’s everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of.

I still come across the occasional ant and fruit fly.

And I found there were myriad definitions of this thing called tragedy that had wormed its way through the history of literature; and the simplest of all was this: that it is the story of a figure who, through some moral flaw or personal failing, falls through force of circumstance to his doom.

More tragic still [for some] is my take on that.

I found the number, called the compound and said to the man on the phone that the owner of the vehicle couldn’t collect it because he was dead. He was my father. That he didn’t mean to leave the car there but he died. That he really didn’t mean to leave it. Lunatic sentences, deadpan, cut from rock. I didn’t understand his embarrassed silence. He said, ‘Sorry, oh God. I’m so sorry’, but he could have said anything at all and it would have signified nothing. We had to take Dad’s death certificate to the compound to avoid the towing fee. This also signified nothing.

Well, we do live in a "human all too hunan" world.

The anger was vast and it came out of nowhere. It was the rage of something not fitting; the frustration of trying to put something in a box that is slightly too small. You try moving the shape around in the hope that some angle will make it fit in the box. Slowly comes an apprehension that this might not, after all, be possible. And finally you know it won’t fit, know there is no way it can fit, but this doesn’t stop you using brute force to try to crush it in, punishing the bloody thing for not fitting properly. That was what it was like: but I was the box, I was the thing that didn’t fit, and I was the person smashing it, over and over again, with bruised and bleeding hands.

So, what lesson have we learned here?

And when I look again she seems neither bird nor reptile, but a creature shaped by a million years of evolution for a life she's not yet lived.

Looking in the mirror, for example.

[iambiguous]

Stendhal

I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.

I tried that once myself. Then never again.

Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.

How about politics in a presidential election?

I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.

Or here: I divine something in myself which offends the Kids.

The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.

So they keep telling me.

I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction, said Mathilde. It is the only thing which cannot be bought.

Imagine then the day that it can be.

Prestige! Sir, is it nothing? To be revered by fools, gaped at by children, envied by the rich and scorned by the wise.

0 for 4 if you're lucky.

[iambiguous]

tiny nietzsche

I just called to say I'm infected

Probably Covid, right?

me: irony is dead
irony: hold my beer

You know, if you meet irony in a bar.

when you can't see the forest for the fire

Lots and lots of forests in fact.

wallace: what's your favorite prog rock band?
biden: the great bachman turner overdrive
trump: abba

You know, in a parallel universe.

oh fuck. what if I'm the doppelgänger?

Or, in extremely rare cases, triplegänger.

in space, no one can hear you murder them

He wondered if, so far, anyone had been murdered in space.

[iambiguous]

Antonin Artaud

I see in the act of throwing the dice and of risking the affirmation of some intuitively felt truth, however uncertain, my whole reason for living.

And he means what exactly?

I am adding another language to the spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the language of speech its old magic, its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterious possibilities have been forgotten.

And he means what exactly?

The truth of life lies in the impulsiveness of matter. The mind of man has been poisoned by concepts. Do not ask him to be content, ask him only to be calm, to believe that he has found his place. But only the madman is really calm.

A wholly determined impulsiveness as it were.

Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.

Let's call this a stage, okay?

I myself am an absolute abyss.

You know, relatively speaking.

In our present state of degeneration it is through the skin that metaphysics must be made to re-enter our minds.

And not just humping and pumping, one suspects.

[iambiguous]

Leigh Bardugo

When people say impossible, they usually mean improbable.

Or, sure, the other way around.

Na razrusha'ya. I am not ruined. E'ya razrushost. I am ruination.

The best of both worlds, he thought.

Yuyeh sesh. Despise your heart. Ni weh sesh. I have no heart.

And that's just for starters.

The less you say, the more weight your words will carry.

Maybe, but I'll still have to hear it.

Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea.

Then this part: Anything not worth doing always starts as a good idea.
Or maybe always is the wrong word.

I wanted to believe anything so that I wouldn’t have to face the future alone.

And anything doesn't exclude much.

I'm perfectly capable of being stupid on my own.

Okay, but that won't stop me from reminding you.

[iambiguous]

so sad today

being alive reminds me why i find it difficult to be alive

Yep: the very first vicious circle.

i miss the illusion of you

So, do you miss the illusion of me?

whispers during sex: i mean we all die alone

On the other hand, before or after she comes?

honk if you're sick of your own bullshit

Or, here, post.

me flirting: how doomed do you think we are?

Me flirting back: let's find out.

listen, if you’re gonna be fake you have to be better at it

So, what works for you?

[iambiguous]

Lydia Millet

Oh how the world reflected you in its unending streams of atoms, churning atoms out of which significance beamed--significance, but not purpose.

Or, rather, not until the atoms in our brains make one up.

Called by the sirens and followed by an albatross.

Some more -- a hell of a lot more -- than others.

Beyond aspects of pain that are physical, thought Oppenheimer, sickness or injury or privation, beyond the so-called obvious, suffering can be a work of art. It can be made of buried and rising things, helpless and undiscovered, song of frustrated want, silence after desire. It can be the test of the self falling short, constrained, distorted, disturbed or rebuffed, the vacuum left by longing, call without an answer..

Let's just call it suffering, he suggested.

There was the honour and austerity of money as he walked through art galleries, as he saw around him the collections of oil paintings by dead men, lit so carefully that warmth seemed to emanate from within - and not because their art was loved or understood but because it could be sold and bought for handsome sums.

Nope, no getting around this part.

We were a roiling mass of opinion, most of it mean. Here we sat at civilization’s technological peak, and what we chose to do on that shining pinnacle was hate each other’s guts.

I wonder if that includes us?

What place would that be, a whole world without roads? It was a panicking thought. A world without roads! He would go nowhere in such a place. He would be trapped where he was, he would have lived out his life only where he was born.

So, were there roads in Königsberg?

[iambiguous]

Noomi Rapace

I'm interested in people's darker side, the ones that aren't easy and well balanced. The cracks.

I'll give her a call then. Wish me luck.

I'd much rather work with people that are tricky and difficult than people that just say yes to everything.

On the other hand, come on, how tricky, how difficult?

My husband, when I was filming the Millennium movies, he asked me, `How far are you going and when are you coming back?'

That's what I'd ask too.

In Sweden everybody has this perfect surface. Everyone is very polite and controls their feelings.

Come on, there has to be at least one who doesn't.

I was a punk rocker when I was a teenager. I wanted to look like Nancy Spungen. I had dyed blonde hair and lots of piercings.

Anyone here surprised?

I don't have this crazy dream about going to Hollywood, because I really love to watch movies and do movies that are complicated, and I want more strange things and complicated things.

Anyone here surprised?

[iambiguous]

sad socrates

I wish there were zero types of people in this world.

Less than zero he means.

Tomorrow is Ignore A Philosopher Day. Show your support.

Come and gone. Maybe next year.

It’s a very difficult time right now. I don’t even know where my next thought will come from.

You wish I could say that, don't you?

Without me, I’m perfect.

Me? Well, a less less imperfect.

We developed herd stupidity long ago.

Some call it the Big Bang.

Without philosophy, life wouldn’t have a false sense of meaning.

Dozens of them. And that's just here.

[iambiguous]

Ezra Pound

To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads, because there are no kilometers.

So, where on the political spectrum would you take this?

If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays.

You tell me: https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sell ... r-fiction/

When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.

Like that's not a good thing.

It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.

And, sure, make a few bucks.

Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

Not counting inflation of course.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

My guess: you'll have your list, I'll have mine.

[iambiguous]

Jack Nicholson

I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.

And he is, after all, Jack Nicholson.

Just because you're a perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect.

You'd think that would go without saying. But you'd be wrong.

There's only two people in your life you should lie to...the police and your girlfriend.

And not just in Chinatown.

People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.

Actually, I wouldn't go that far. But point taken.

Human beings are always going to find interesting ways of making a mess of their lives. It's human nature.

And that's before we get to all the memes.

I'm Irish. I think about death all the time.

And, one suspects, now more than ever.

[iambiguous]

sad socrates

At this point, if you cut me open and a winged goat flew out I wouldn’t be surprised.

What if it flew out of his ass?

Existentialism isn’t an affliction; it’s a permanence.

Right, like it can't be both.

It’s shocking what people don’t see in the world.

Or, for some here, what they do see.

Kids: rain, rain go away
Adults: pain, pain go away

Not counting the kids at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Right, God?

Free lessons are the hardest learned.

Not unlike mine here.

There’s never been a better time to be dead.

Unless, perhaps, it's tomorrow.

[iambiguous]

Charles Yu

Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years.

Or, rather, what's left of your future self.

Time isn't an orderly stream. Time isn't a placid lake recording each of our ripples. Time is viscous. Time is a massive flow. It is a self-healing substance, which is to say, almost everything will be lost. We're too slight, to inconsequntial, despite all of our thrashing and swimming and waving our arms about. Time is an ocean of inertia, drowning out the small vibrations, absorbing the slosh and churn, the foam and wash, and we're up here, flapping and slapping and just generally spazzing out, and sure, there's a little splashing on the surface, but that doesn't even register in the depths, in the powerful undercurrents miles below us, taking us wherever they are taking us.

This may well be the millionth take on time I've read.

What is this called, what I am doing, to myself, to my life, this wallowing, this pondering, this rolling over and over in the same places of my memory, wearing them thin, wearing them out? Why don't I ever learn? Why don't I ever do anything different?

With any luck, they won't tell us.

You can only go to places that you will let yourself go.

It would have to be that way, wouldn't it?

I am transcribing a book that I have, in a sense, not yet written, and in another sense, have always written, and in another sense, am currently writing, and in another sense, am always writing, and in another sense, will never write.

Like we do here with posts.

I hate everything about her except for the fact that I love everything about her.

Or: I love everything about her except for the fact that I hate everything about her.
You know, if there's a difference.

[iambiguous]

Edward O. Wilson

...this raises a fundamental question: are we also evolving genetically? Medical research, added to a deepening analysis of the three billion nucleotide letters of the human genome, has revealed that evolution is indeed still occurring.

Who would ever have suspected otherwise?

It should not be thought that war, often accompanied by genocide, is a cultural artifact of a few societies. Nor has it been an aberration of history, a result of the growing pains of our species’ maturation. Wars and genocide have been universal and eternal, respecting no particular time or culture.

That can't be good, some insist. So that can't be true, they insist further.

The great religions are also, and tragically, sources of ceaseless and unnecessary suffering. They are impediments to the grasp of reality needed to solve most social problems in the real world.

My guess: the small religions too.

Original discoveries, to remind you, are what counts the most. Let me put that more strongly: they are all that counts. They are the silver and gold of science.

So, what are the top ten? And which one is number one?

Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if obedient to the other constraints of mammalian biology, is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract.

Uh, yeah, right.

There is no dispute between me and Richard Dawkins and there never has been, because he’s a journalist, and journalists are people that report what the scientists have found and the arguments I’ve had have actually been with scientists doing research.

How important is this to understand?

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question." Ludwig Wittgenstein

Like that will ever be possible.

“All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.” Walter Benjamin

What the hell does that even mean?

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist." Friedrich Nietzsche

It's almost as though he never heard of the either/or world.

"Enjoy life. This is not a dress rehearsal." Friedrich Nietzsche

And coming from him no less.

"Few people have the imagination for reality." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

No, really, Kids, think about that.

"Whatever art is, it is no longer something primarily to be looked at. Stared at, perhaps, but not primarily looked at." Arthur Danto

Yo, Andy!

[iambiguous]

Jean Cocteau

Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.

Just ask the asshole in the White House now. And then all the rest of them.

Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.

A rather important distinction.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

Oh, it's hurrying alright. For some of us.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

Not counting jeans and a t-shirt of course.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

You know, among other things.

May the devil himself splatter you with dung.

A few of you here in fact.

[iambiguous]

Glenn Close

It is an odd paradox that a society, which can now speak openly and unabashedly about topics that were once unspeakable, still remains largely silent when it comes to mental illness.

Not only that, but now we toss those who are afflicted in prison.

All great art comes from a sense of outrage.

I know that mine would.

Acting, to me, is about the incredible adventure of examining the landscape of human heart and soul. That's basically what we do.

Yo, Mr. Philosopher!

It always amazes me to think that every house on every street is full of so many stories; so many triumphs and tragedies, and all we see are yards and driveways.

Then start knocking on doors?

I never wanted to be a man. I feel sorry for them.

As well she should. After all, look at some of the assholes we have here.

as an actor, I really feel you cannot judge a character. You have to totally commit to that character. And for me to totally commit to the character, I have to find those places where I understand the sequence of behavior.

The inner dasein as it were.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

“The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.” Arthur Schopenhauer

What's that make the Kids then?

"We have art so that we shall not die of reality." Friedrich Nietzsche

Next up: why we have philosophy.

"History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.” Sydney J. Harris

Not counting Trumpworld of course.

“By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.” Desiderius Erasmus

Counting Trumpworld in particular.

“Man is what he believes.” Anton Chekhov

Shudder to think.

“...It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.” D.W. Winnicott

Let's cite actual examples.

[iambiguous]

Stendhal

...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.

Yet here I am.

The great drawback of being witty is that you have to keep your eyes fixed on the semi-idiots around you, and absorb their worthless sensations.

Yet here you are.

I cannot provide the reality of events, I can only convey their shadow.

And even then but in words.

To write a book is to risk being shot at in public.

You know, back then.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

Let alone to invent only for the winners.

The more one pleases generally, the less one pleases profoundly.

And you all know my rendition of that here.

[iambiguous]

Antonin Artaud

So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair.

Sure, if that's actually an option.

Leave the caves of being.

Yo, Plato!

If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.

That or being wage slaves to pays the bills.

I know each conversation with a psychiatrist in the morning made me want to hang myself because I knew I could not strangle him.

Of course he's only paraphrasing Tom Cruise.

Without sarcasm I sink into chaos.

Yo, Stooges!

If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself, but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.

Suicide, the intellectual conraption.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy Tweets

"And another regrettable thing about death is the ceasing of your own brand of magic..." John Updike

Nope, that's not even in my top 10.

"Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?" M. C. Escher

Allow him to illustrate the point.

"We adore chaos because we love to produce order." M. C. Escher

Allow him to illustrate the point.

"It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself." Johann Sebastian Bach

Next up: it's easy to post philosophy.

"You are on earth, no cure for that." Samuel Beckett

Or, sure, you are six feet under it. With no cure for that.

"After a certain age all of us, good and bad, are grief stricken because of powers within us which have never been realized: because, in other words, we are not what we should be." Barclay

Let alone what we want to be.

[iambiguous]

Lydia Millet

Molecules never die, I thought. Hadn’t they told us that in chemistry? Hadn’t they said a molecule of Julius Caesar’s dying breath was, statistically speaking, in every breath we took.

Wow, Julius Caesar lives on!

You don’t see a fish in a chair often.

Let alone one describing it.

We have seen these bodies, she would think, and even long after we are gone some particle in the universe will hold a memory of the words we once used to describe their beauty.

So, who among us takes the least comfort in that?

The gun is mightier than the pen, was our true opinion, and the RPG is mightier still.

And not just if you're a terrorist.

...if you're the kind of person who wants to know what's at the end of the universe, what's at the edge of being...and comprehension settles on you that you'll never know, despair can well up.

See, didn't I tell you?

Let God leave us! Let us grow up. Let us walk forward on our own. Because we need the silence of the holy: we need the sacred and equally we need its maddening silence. And in the curious privacy and relief of that silence we can go out into the chaos and commit a thousand acts of minor and gleeful splendor all our own. If it's our tragedy to be left by God, then let it also be our luck.

See, didn't I tell you?

[iambiguous]

Joey Lauren Adams

A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.

Any geniuses here perchance?

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions.

I'll bet that works both ways.

A teacher is a person who used to think he liked children.

Probably a few exceptions though.

Education is wonderful...it helps you worry about things all over the world.

Not much around [these days] that doesn't do that though.

'Chasing Amy' was an amazing role, but then after that, I went and did 'Big Daddy' and you're the girlfriend or you're the best friend. I wasn't getting the Nicole Kidman roles.

40 films later, she still isn't.

Stay with me; I want to be alone.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[iambiguous]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.

Let alone to explain why some see it as right and others as wrong.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

On the other hand, what wise man might that be?

Men are four;
He who knows and knows not that he knows. He is asleep; wake him.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not. He is a fool; shun him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not. He is a child; teach him.
He who knows and knows that he knows. He is a king; follow him.
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

Poetically as it were.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.



Silence and solitude, the soul's best friends.

Actually, it's solitude and silence.

The great tragedy of the average man is that he goes to his grave with his music still in him.

If you call that shit music.

[iambiguous]

Nein

Our discontent. It can’t wait til Winter.

And won't go away in Spring.

Sorry, sir. This is not a democracy. It is a painting of a democracy.

Actually, more a rough sketch.

You don’t have to be hopeless. But it helps.

And a hell of a lot for some of us.

Bringing Occam’s razor to a Chekhov’s gun fight.

Let's explain this.

If you need me, I’ll be plunging into uncertainty.

Or, even if you don't need me.

I’m just here for the degradation of the discourse.

After all, this is the internet.