“Dying Is An Art,like Everything Else.

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

“The acquisition of a book signalled not just the potential acquisition of knowledge but also something like the property rights to a piece of ground: the knowledge became a visitable place.”

— James Wood, Serious Noticing: Selected Essays

27th August 2020, 10.39pm

Today I, surprise surprise, let myself get swallowed by the idleness of procrastination. This morning felt like a dream, like I did not exist, and I know that one day I will just disappear and everything will feel soft and muffled, warm and peaceful. 

Tomorrow I really need to do finally do homework, or I will not be able to finish all of it in time. I wonder why it’s necessary to do it, at the end of the day it is not like I will need most of these things in life. Maybe I’m too much of a nihilist, and I should appreciate learning and studying just for the sake of acquiring new knowledge. Truth is, I love learning. But I do not love learning anything. I like Science, knowing how the universe and our bodies work. i like History, reading about past events that shaped the world. I like Literature, or maybe I just like reading, and I like Greek and Latin too, although they are so much work. I hate Math though. 

I bought three face masks today. My skin is one of my biggest insecurities - my teeth (it angers me to say this because I wore braces for two years) still make me insecure too, and so does my body. I hate having a physical form.

Halsey today released merch for her first album, Badlands. It is one of my favourite albums ever, it just means so much to me since it was one of the first LPs that connected with me. I really wanted to get a t-shirt, but my parents said no because the price and the shipping was too expensive. It made me sad, to be honest. They think it’s not worth it because, to them, it’s just a t-shirt, while to me it represents all that I connect to Badlands. 

I think I am too attached to physical things. My room is not messy, but at first, to a stranger eye, it might look like it because it’s just so full of things. My walls are covered in photos, instant photos mostly - which, by the way, sometimes feel depressing because they rarely show someone I love or who loves me; it just shows that I am lonely -, piles books are everywhere because I have no space for them, three pencil holders are completely full with stationery. Everything is just so colorful that sometimes it feels suffocating. But I like it. It makes me feel full. 

Seeing the hundreds of books I’ve read somehow validates my enjoyment in reading. The hundreds of photos are a poor attempt to remind myself I have been outside of my house. I also own some CDs, not as many as I wish because they are expensive, and although I never play them,  I love them.

Since I was a child, I have always been obsessed with things. I collected Pokémon cards, rocks, pins. At one point I even collected empty bottles and cans, of drinks that were and are not common in Italy. I just really like owning things, they make me feel full, real. In the back of my head, a voice tells me it is wrong. I wish my brain did not react so well to what Lorde calls “the little bright things that I bought.”

-c.

“I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.”

— Roy Croft

02/28/2021

A person’s actions may be a result of careful thinking;

they may be a wim based on precursor principles and ideas,

although they might just as well be without a meaning.

A shell.Or not?

A wall.Or not?

Ensuring the groundwork behind every action should be the first priority.

None can be commenced whenever it is missing the meaning that should be conveyed.

However fundamental I regard this notion to be,not many do so nowadays.

Therefore I am left wandering about whether the meaning I see is real or made-up by my own beliefs,thoughts and needs.

Humans can be rather imaginative when it comes to deciphering the smallest of actions.

Nothing is almost ever delivered in its integrity,

May it be for fear of giving away the true meaning and reason they formed in their minds;

Or for a specifically intended reason,which,for all intents and purposes,is intangible.

Loneliness is a Dangerous Thing

‘Everyone knows there are forms of cruelty which can injure a man’s life without injuring his body. They are such as deprive him of a certain form of food necessary to the life of the soul.’                     - Simone Weil, The Need for Roots

Rootlessness and homelessness, though similar in nature, are also quite different. A person who is rootless may very well have a home, but does not have a sense of belonging, they identify themselves as ‘the other’. 

Since the end of World War II, migration has increased significantly with people opting to set up their life somewhere new, whether this be for a job, education, religion, or whatever opportunity this may provide. A person disentangles themselves from the ties and bonds that they have with one place and form this relationship somewhere new… this is now home.

But home for you may not always be home for the new family that you set up. I have mentioned this before in another post so I won’t go into it in too much detail, but when looking at those with extremist and ‘radical’ thoughts, we find that they are often children of those who have migrated. The parents have chosen to build home in a new foreign land and build a relationship with that place, but the relationship is not so straight forward. This relationship is a half way house between assimilating and holding onto one’s culture; the migrant chooses which parts of the new culture to adopt and which parts of their old culture to hold onto. This might vary from eating and drinking habits, clothing, social life, it could be anything. 

The child of the migrant however, having not chosen but instead having been brought up with this conflict between the two cultures feels lost. This is something I have thought about for a long time, but Arendt put it into the words I have been searching for for so long. 

The child feels a sense of rootlessness. 

Arendt argues that those who feel rootless or homeless will seek out a home for themselves at any cost, which can have disastrous consequences. 

She states that for an individual who feels rootless and homeless, often with this comes the feeling of having an existence that is not meaningful or fruitful. To find this sense of belonging, individuals often turn to exclusionary movements and groups, which actually only increases the feeling of alienation and rootlessness. Now they are in a group that only contains people such as themselves, perhaps from one place, class, religion, etc. all together feeling like outsiders, because of the absence of others of a different background. 

Arendt says that uprootedness has been ‘the curse of the modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution’.

Loneliness is a dangerous thing. When a person is lonely, when they feel their roots are not in any ground but sort of drifting from place to place, a person is not themselves. Who are we, after all, without a background against us? Just an entity, perhaps? 

‘To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul.’

“I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.”

—

E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, essayist, critic, librettist

I’m Not/I Am

I’m Not…

I’m not the girl who would tie your tongue.

I’m not the girl who turns your head.

I’m not the girl you’d ask to prom

Or even on a date.

I’m not the girl who likes frills and lace.

I’m not the girl who’d be flirty or flighty.

I’m not the girl who you would daydream about.

I’m not the girl who everyone sees,

The one who beams beauty, radiance, and so carefree.

I’m not the one to be in the foreground.

I’m not visible to anyone.

I Am…

I am the girl you’d pass in the halls,

Who’d probably like you from afar, but never say a word.

I am the girl who’d sketch or write,

My words never reaching your heart or eyes.

I’m the girl who stands in the rain

That mixes with her tears and drowns out her cries.

I am the girl who is always the second choice.

Why on earth would I ever be the first?

I am the girl some would torment

Because I’m different and hide in the background.

I’m the girl that’s invisible to you.

The one you’d never remember until we meet again.

I need to know

"I find talking hard I find explaining impossible And I find trying arduous

It was never easy to talk It was never possible to explain And it was burdensome to try

But I realized that to comprehend I had to write I had to read and I had to know more

And for that I will always love writing for I can finally communicate I shall always love reading for I see and understand myself through the characters And I will keep trying to know for I have to try and need to know"