asadume

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― Her (2013)

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

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Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Anton Chekhov (via amortizing)

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We all have too many wheels, screws and valves to judge each other on first impressions or one or two pointers. I don’t understand you, you don’t understand me and we don’t understand ourselves.

Anton Chekhov, Ivanov (via gosh)

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Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

Samuel Beckett (via lomasdope)

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A little darkness, in itself, at the time, is nothing. You think no more about it and you go on. But I know what darkness is, it accumulates, thickens, then suddenly bursts and drowns everything.

Samuel Beckett (via quotemadness)

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To be, to live—that is enough, that is the honor of the gods; and therefore all things that but have life are equal in the divine world, and in it there are no masters and servants. Natures live together, like lovers; they hold all in common, spirit, joy, and eternal youth.

Friedrich Holderlin, Hyperion (via theframedmaelstrom)

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Holy spirits, you walk up there in the light, on soft earth. Shining god-like breezes touch upon you gently, as a woman’s fingers play music on holy strings. Like sleeping infants the gods breathe without any plan; the spirit flourishes continually in them, chastely kept, as in a small bud, and their holy eyes look out in still eternal clearness. A place to rest isn’t given to us. Suffering humans decline and blindly fall from one hour to the next, like water thrown from cliff to cliff, year after year, down into the Unknown.

Hyperion’s Song of Destiny, – Friedrich Holderlin. (via borgnyaarhus)

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I sometimes have nightmares about a world of echoes in which there are only echoes, and echoes of echoes, and echoes of echoes of echoes—reverberating forever down the empty corridors of my mind.

Alan Watts (via alanwilsonwatts)

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The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.

Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations (via socialclaustrophobia)

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Her (2013) dir. Spike Jonze

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Let us be like Two falling stars in the day sky. Let no one know of our sublime beauty As we hold hands with God And burn

Hafiz (via saalik)

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Selma: You know when the camera goes really big and it comes up out of the roof, and you just know that it's gonna end? I hate that. I used to cheat on that when I was a little girl back in Czechoslovakia. I would leave the cinema just after the next to last song, and the film would just go on forever. It's lovely, isn't it?

Dancer in the Dark, 2000.

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Her 2013

Dear Catherine, I’ve been sitting here thinking about all the things I wanted to apologize to you for. All the pain we caused each other. Everything I put on you. Everything I needed you to be or needed you to say. I’m sorry for that. I’ll always love you ‘cause we grew up together and you helped make me who I am. I just wanted you to know there will be a piece of you in me always, and I’m grateful for that. Whatever someone you become, and wherever you are in the world, I’m sending you love. You’re my friend to the end. Love, Theodore

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20 January. As in the despairing hour of death you cannot meditate on right and wrong, so you cannot in the despairing hour of life. It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds that they have made.

Franz Kafka, Diaries (via kafkas-diaries)

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Saraha's Treasury of Songs

The Brahmins who do not know the truth, Vainly recite the Vedas four.

With earth and water and kusha-grass they make preparations. And seated at home they kindle fire, And from the senseless offerings that they make, They burn their eyes with the pungent smoke.

In lordly garb with one staff or three, They think themselves wise with their brahmanical lore. Vainly is the world enslaved by their vanity. They do not know that dharma's the same as non-dharma.

With ashes these masters smear their bodies, And on their heads they wear matted hair. Seated within the house they kindle lamps. Seated in a corner they tinkle bells.

They adopt a posture and fix their eyes, Whispering in ears and deceiving folk, Teaching widows and bald-headed nuns and such like, Imitating them as they take their fee.

The Jain monks mock the Way with their appearance, With their long nails and their filthy clothes, Or else naked and with disheveled hair, Enslaving themselves with their doctrine of release.

If by nakedness one is released, Then dogs and jackals must be so. If from absence of hair there comes perfection, Then the hips of maidens must be so.

If from having a tail there comes release, Then for the peacock and yak it must be so. If wisdom consists in eating just what one finds, Then for the elephant and horse it must be so.

For these Jain monks there is no release, Saraha says. Deprived of the truth of happiness, they do but afflict their own bodies.

Then there are the novices and bhikshus with the teaching of the Old School, Who renounce the world to be monks. Some are seen sitting and reading the scriptures, Some wither away on the their concentration on thought.

Others have recourse to the great Vehicle. This is the doctrine which expounds the original texts, (they say). Others just meditate on mandala-circles. Others strive to define the fourth stage of bliss.

With such investigating they fall from the Way; Some would envisage it as space, Others endow it with the nature of voidness, And thus they are generally in disagreement.

Whoever deprived of the Innate, seeks nirvana, Can in no wise acquire the absolute truth.

Whoever is intent on anything else, how may he gain release? Will one gain release, abiding in meditation? What's the use of lamps? What's the use of offerings? What's to be done by reliance on mantras?

What is the use of austerities? What is the use of going on pilgrimage? Is release achieved by bathing in water?

Abandon such false statements and renounce such illusion!

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I am dirty, Milena, infinitely dirty, this is why I scream so much about purity.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena (via xwg)