For that moment at least

For that moment at least they seemed to give up external plans, theories, and codes, even the inescapable romantic curiosity about one another, to indulge in being simply and purely young, to share that sense of the world’s affliction, that outgoing sorrow at the spectacle of Our Human Condition which anyone this age regards as reward or gratuity for having survived adolescence.

For them the music was sweet and painful, the strolling chains of tourists like a Dance of Death. They stood on the curb, gazing at one another, jostled against by hawkers and sightseers, lost as much perhaps in that bond of youth as in the depths of the eyes each contemplated.

-Thomas Pynchon, in the novel V (p. 198, Bantam Windstone paperback edition, 1963)

If he’d been the type

If he’d been the type who evolves theories of political history for his own amusement, he might have said all political events: wars, governments and uprisings, have the desire to get laid as their roots; because history unfolds according to economic forces and the only reason anybody wants to get rich is so he can get laid steadily, with whomever he chooses.

-Thomas Pynchon, in the novel V (p. 198, Bantam Windstone paperback edition, 1963)

While at Anthroresearch

While at Anthroresearch Profane listened with half an ear to the coffee percolating; and carried on another imaginary conversation with SHROUD. By now that had become a tradition.

Remember, Profane, how it is on Route 14, souths, outside Elmira, New York? You walk on an overpass and look west and see the sun setting on a junkpile. Acres of old cars, piled up ten high in rusting tiers. A graveyard for cars. If I could die, that’s what my graveyard would look like.

“I wish you would. Look at you, masquerading like a human being. You ought to be junked. Not burned or cremated.”

Of course. Like a human being. Now remember, right after the war, the Nuremberg war trials? Remember the photographs of Auschwitz? Thousands of Jewish corpses, stacked up like those poor car-bodies. Schlemihl: It’s already started.

“Hitler did that. He was crazy.”

Hitler, Eichmann, Mengele. Fifteen years ago. Has it occurred to you there may be no more standards for crazy or sane, now that it’s started?

“What, for Christ sake?”

- Thomas Pynchon, in the novel V, p. 275 (Bantam Windstone paperback edition, 1963)

Onnen tunne syntyy

“Onnen tunne syntyy siitä, kuinka hyvin ihminen näkee omaan tiedostamattomaansa. Ihminen saavuttaa itsenäisyyden ja kokonaisuuden, kun hän muuttuu ulkoaohjautuvasta sisältäpäin toimivaksi.” -onnellisuustutkija Antti Heikkilä, Kaupantekijä 3/06.