The Rings of Saturn “In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work. And in fact my hope was realized, up to a point; for I have seldom felt so carefree as I did then, walking for hours in the day through the thinly populated countryside, which stretches inland from the coast. I wonder now, however, whether there might be something in the old superstition that certain ailments of the spirit and of the body are particularly likely to beset us under the sign of the Dog Star.



At all events, in retrospect I became preoccupied not only with the unaccustomed sense of freedom but also with the paralysing horror that had come over me at various times when confronted with the traces of destruction, reaching far back into the past, that were evident even in that remote place.



Perhaps it was because of this that, a year to the day after I began my tour, I was taken into hospital in Norwich in a state of almost total immobility. It was then that I began in my thoughts to write these pages. I can remember precisely how, upon being admitted to that room on the eighth floor, I became overwhelmed by the feeling that the Suffolk expanses I had walked the previous summer had now shrunk once and for all to a single, blind, insensate spot. Indeed, all that could be seen of the world from my bed was the colourless patch of sky framed in the window.“



— W. G. Sebald. “The Rings of Saturn,” 1998 2:35 pm • 24 April 2018

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind “ABOUT 13.5 BILLION YEARS AGO, MATTER, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. The story of these fundamental features of our universe is called physics.

About 300,000 years after their appearance, matter and energy started to coalesce into complex structures, called atoms, which then combined into molecules. The story of atoms, molecules and their interactions is called chemistry.

About 3.8 billion years ago, on a planet called Earth, certain molecules combined to form particularly large and intricate structures called organisms. The story of organisms is called biology.

About 70,000 years ago, organisms belonging to the species Homo sapiens started to form even more elaborate structures called cultures. The subsequent development of these human cultures is called history.

Three important revolutions shaped the course of history: the Cognitive Revolution kick-started history about 70,000 years ago. The Agricultural Revolution sped it up about 12,000 years ago. The Scientific Revolution, which got under way only 500 years ago, may well end history and start something completely different. This book tells the story of how these three revolutions have affected humans and their fellow organisms.” - Yuval Noah Harari. “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.” 2014 11:20 am • 22 April 2018

Manual of Psychomagic “For good results it is necessary for the person who wants to practice psychomagic to have an understanding attitude toward himself. Children, in their effort to be loved by their parents, fear being judged guilty of an offense. For a child, who depends vitally on adults, it is terrifying to awaken anger in the adult and to be punished. Children learn to deny or repress what Freud called polymorphous perversity—infantile sexual desires toward any object (loosely speaking). This primary, innate amorality must be accepted when one works to eliminate the effects of trauma. The experimenter must accept his urges—whether incestuous, narcissistic, bisexual, sadomasochistic, cannibalistic, or coprophagic—and fulfill them metaphorically. Beneath every illness is the forbiddance of something we desire to do or an order to do something we do not desire. All recovery requires disobedience to this prohibition or order. And in order to disobey, it is necessary to lose the infantile fear of not being loved or the fear of abandonment. This fear provokes a lack of confidence: the affected does not realize who she actually is and instead tries to be what others expect her to be. If this person persists in this attitude[…]” - Alejandro Jodorowsky. “Manual of Psychomagic.” 2015 12:27 pm • 18 April 2018

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek “I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I’d half-awaken. He’d stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk. And some mornings I’d wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I’d been painted with roses.” Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” 1974,

Chapter 1: Heaven and Earth in Jest 12:32 pm • 17 April 2018

Lincoln in the Bardo “On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen. Now, I know what you are thinking: older man (not thin, somewhat bald, lame in one leg, teeth of wood) exercises the marital prerogative, thereby mortifying the poor young—

But that is false.

That is exactly what I refused to do, you see.

On our wedding night I clumped up the stairs, face red with drink and dance, found her arrayed in some thinnish thing an aunt had forced her into, silk collar fluttering slightly with her quaking—and could not do it.

”

- hans vollman, George Saunders. “Lincoln in the Bardo”, 2017 4:45 pm • 16 April 2018

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer Barefoot conducts his seminars on his houseboat in Sausalito. It costs a hundred dollars to find out why we are on this Earth. You also get a sandwich, but I wasn’t hungry that day.

- Philip K. Dick, 1981 12:08 am • 16 April 2018