I no longer felt not only the question
if the darkness or the teeth shining bloody in there
are the worst or both
I just enjoy the looking back
from the wounds I have
Poetry
Day 2967, even.
Daily picture, PoetryEven the past that is left
will one day join
the days that are gone
Day 2964, Individual.
Daily picture, My thoughts, QuotesIndividualism. I was raised in the West, and as such, I believed, till I was around 21, that the goal in life was to make a good life for myself. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I wanted to make money and use this to buy my way to a future that mostly revolved around me. I had no idea what kind of negative effect this individualistic and capitalistic mindset had on the world, it didn’t cross my mind, till it did. I am still guilty of this inbred behavior, but at least I feel guilty now, and I try to steer away from what comes easy. But it has steered my choices in profound ways, I have worked for nonprofit organizations for most of my career, a more or less conscious decision.
However, this individualism or egoism is not unique to only our culture; we are all different in the way we look and the experiences we have, and the culture we grew up in is not more than a layer this experience has to go through. We also have a slightly unique way of dealing with the world around us and within us, but all these individual characteristics are, for the most part, exclusively yours, only when you look really close. Our uniqueness fades away the more distance you have from it. You can describe unique characteristics to a group of a thousand people and forget that it’s made up of a thousand individuals and you.
You are also made up of a thousand individual parts and experiences, and you and the outside world see that combination as your characteristics, your individuality. But just as a group of a thousand people can only be judged on a superficial level and thus labeled, so is your individuality a loose… estimation of who you are. Maybe there isn’t even a real you besides this view from a distance of the parts that seem to form you.
Does this all matter? You are so used to yourself and how you behave that it might as well be seen as being a part of who you are. So-called reality will probably agree with you, and in our daily life, it is easier to say about yourself or someone else who and what we or they seem to be. However, the downside of putting each other in boxes is that there are a lot of problems with this. Look at history and the news and see how often labels around people’s necks are part of the problem and even worse when whole groups get labeled and are put in boxes.
It is something typically human, I think. Imagine the first humans learning how to speak and how the most influential person in that first group decided what to name the things around them, the one with the loudest voice you could say. We are all conditioned to accept authority in our lives and the naming they do, even the flawed authority in ourselves.
Who are you? I think the best way of finding yourself is not to look for it but just be and take what you seem to be not too seriously, especially the labels attached to certain behaviors because labels come with expectations, and expectations are not timeless, let alone real.
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
“I won’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!”
“You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never
Rises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.”
Day 2961, natures.
Day's pictures, PoetrySymmetry
natures neuroses
Day 2958, we don’t.
Daily picture, My thoughts, PoetryWords are symbols we can disagree on
but not the meaning behind them
I have lived among people who don’t speak my language for a long time. I understand them well enough, but not when they speak their own dialects. But still… I learn who they are by the abundance of other signals. Language is overrated as one of the tools that helps us communicate with each other.
We might speak to ourselves every now and then, but most of the time, these words are afterthoughts thrown at our actions and feelings, a clumsy way to rationalize or order our inner world. In some sense, we also do this when we communicate with others outside ourselves. We don’t need to talk to the people we really know.
Day 2956, time.
Daily picture, PoetryIt all looks so perfect
the moments before you flower
it is not even a dream
at that moment
but a reality
caught in time
caught in your time
Day 2954, stare.
Daily picture, PoetryI stare at the handrail
I hold it
I feel it
to much
Day 2953, or not.
Daily picture, PoetryArriving at a corner
standing still
backed into
almost
two walls
but a choice
to go
or not
Day 2951, with only.
Daily picture, PoetryI held power inside me
but they didn’t treat me
left the door open
and now I stand here
dirty
left behind
with only my head high
Day 2950, up close.
Daily picture, PoetryFrom a distance I see a door
an opening to something new
a backdoor from where I stand
or maybe too small for a me
do I take the time that I have
to feel from up close this door
or turn away for a now
on the road I go
Day 2949, old street.
Daily picture, PoetryI walked through the old street
it brought me closer
but to what
Day 2947, we meet.
Daily picture, PoetryYou tell me your name
but I don’t see you
you are around
but not yet where I am
I know you now
and soon we meet
Day 2946, of a you.
Daily picture, PoetryI see a distorted
stretched depiction
of a you hanging
standing
It's my own darkness
that defines
Day 2945,
Daily picture, Poetry, QuotesSometimes
you have to start at the beginning
somewhere
halfway
Friedrich Nietzsche
On the Genealogy of Morals
Preface
1 We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves, how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves? It has rightly been said: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge are. We are constantly making for them, being by nature winged creatures and honeygatherers of the spirit; there is one thing alone we really care about from the heart “bringing something home.” Whatever else there is in life, so-called experiences”-which of us has sufficient earnestness for them? Or sufficient time? Present experience has, I am afraid, always found us “absent-minded”: we cannot give our hearts to it-not even our ears! Rather, as one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into hose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself: “what really was that which just struck?” so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and ask, utterly surprised and disconcerted, “what really was that which we have just experienced?” and moreover: “who are we really?” and, afterward as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being-and alas! miscount them. So we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law “Each is furthest from himself · applies to aur eternity-we are not “men of knowledge” with respect to ourselves.
Day 2944, go.
Daily picture, PoetryI just want to go
and you can’t stop me
though you do
Day 2943, at me.
Daily picture, PoetryMy monster lies silent
in my imagination
it doesn’t wake
but pretends to
when I see it
looking at me