++++

recommend using some nice headphones, or something where you can hear stereo clearly.

there is a couple that feeds its dog once a day, and not a large portion. the dog, being hungry, eats it quickly and must last a full day until the next meal.

our dog might be better off if he didn’t eat his food all at once, but divided it throughout the day. how would the couple interpret his act of intelligence? why, they would probably think, “we’re feeding him just enough, and he eats when he’s hungry”…

it might be added that an extremely intelligent dog, realizing this, would gobble his food up quickly to show how hungry he is.

just now I realized that I achieved one of my goals from last year’s “resolutions”, if I stretch the interpretation a little.

just a month or two ago, I was thinking about what a joke all the goals were, and then I forgot about it until now.. funny how that works out.

Religion! I do admit eternal life and perhaps have always admitted it. Let consciousness be lit up by the will of a higher power, let it look at the world and say: “I am!” and let the higher power suddenly decree its annihilation, because for some reason–or even without explaining for what reason–that is needed: let it be so, I admit all that, but again comes the eternal question: why is my humility needed here? Isn’t it possible simply to eat me, without demanding that I praise that which has eaten me? Can it be that someone there will indeed be offended that I don’t want to wait for two weeks? I don’t believe it; and it would be much more likely to suppose that my insignificant life, the life of an atom, was simply needed for the fulfillment of some universal harmony as a whole, for some plus and minus, for some sort of contrast, and so on and so forth, just as daily sacrifice requires the lives of a multitude of beings, without whose death the rest of the world could not stand (though it must be noted that this is not a very magnanimous thought in itself). But so be it! I agree that it was quite impossible to arrange the world otherwise, that is, without the ceaseless devouring of each other; I even agree to admit that I understand nothing of this arrangement; but on the other hand, I know this for certain: if I have once been given the consciousness that “I am,” what business is it of mine that the world has been arranged with mistakes and that otherwise it cannot stand? Who is going to judge me after that, and for what? Say what you will, all this is impossible and unjust.

And meanwhile, even in spite of all my desire, I could never imagine to myself that there is no future life and no providence. Most likely there is all that, but we don’t understand anything about the future life and its laws. But if it is so difficult and even completely impossible to understand it, can it be that I will have to answer for being unable to comprehend the unknowable? True, they say, and the prince, of course, along with them, that it is here that obedience is necessary, that one must obey without reasoning, out of sheer good behavior, and that I am bound to be rewarded for my meekness in the other world. We abase providence too much by ascribing our own notions to it, being vexed that we can’t understand it. But, again, if it’s impossible to understand it, then, I repeat, it is hard to have to answer for something that it is not given to man to understand. And if so, how are they going to judge me for being to unable to understand the true will and laws of providence? No, we’d better leave religion alone.

But enough. When I get to these lines, the sun will probably already be risen and “resounding in the sky,” and a tremendous, incalculable force will pour out on all that is under the sun. So be it! I will die looking straight into the wellspring of force and life, and I will not want this life! If it had been in my power not to be born, I probably would not have accepted existence on such derisive conditions. But I still have the power to die, though I’m giving back what’s already numbered. No great power, no great rebellion either.

Dostoevsky’s Idiot

wanted to finish the main outline/general melody for this thing I’m working on this past week.. didn’t finish

and really really stuck, so I guess I’ll start filling in details.. and hopefully something will come to me for the last bit that’s missing so that I can begin the orchestration.

there are times, in a life, when you reason yourself into the opposite conclusion of what you feel.

that’s probably what you set out to do when you started reasoning in the first place, consciously or not.

there are times, in a life, when we come across profound ideas. soon after some of these times, perhaps not more than seconds, we realize that the profound idea is actually very trivial. some times we may realize we’ve gone full circle, and that we already knew the answer.

but now we know it in a different way.

I think that’s probably how any truths must be. profound trivialities.