peirokalos

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bresson, mouchette via blind pony

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We loved each other, we lived in each other, through each other, by each other. We were each other. Why was it such pure unadulterated pain?

— Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea

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A mural of a forest in the South Bronx, New York. Captured by Thomas Hoepker, 1983

Mural Art by Alan Sonfist, 1978. The building still exists, however the mural is no longer there

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White Americans ... are terrified of sensuality and do not any longer understand it. The word “sensual” is not intended to bring to mind quivering dusky maidens or priapic black studs. I am referring to something much simpler and much less fanciful. To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. ... Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become. It is this individual uncertainty on the part of white American men and women, this inability to renew themselves at the fountain of their own lives, that makes the discussion, let alone elucidation, of any conundrum—that is, any reality—so supremely difficult. The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality—for this touchstone can be only oneself. Such a person interposes between himself and reality nothing less than a labyrinth of attitudes. And these attitudes, furthermore, though the person is usually unaware of it (is unaware of so much!), are historical and public attitudes. They do not relate to the present any more than they relate to the person.

--James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 1963

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summer 2025

When people love you they want to ease your pain

Your desire to be a sleek and independent and unwanting machine is unattainable and rampantly destructive

You can eat the serviceberries growing by the river they’re best when theyre dark red but not too dark red

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The Soviet Union, 1975 - Dmitry Simchenko

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“Still, the sun was hot. Still, one got over things. Still, life had a way of adding day to day.”

— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

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“It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

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Walter Mittelholzer - Corinthian rock tombs, Petra, Abyssinia Flight, 15.02.1934

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STEPHEN: (he taps his brow) But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king.

James Joyce, Ulysses

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When Dostoevsky said, "Pain changes you, but it teaches. That is its mercy." but Kafka said, "Pain changes nothing. It just repeats itself until you forget who you were before it started."

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A rainbow over Gaza City. Mohammed Abed/AFP

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Wislawa Szymborska

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“To die for God is not a proof of faith in God. To die for an unknown and repulsive convict who is a victim of injustice, that is a proof of faith in God.”

— Simone Weil

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“Under the gaze of Clarice Lispector, every event hatches; the ordinary opens up and shows its treasure, which is, precisely, ordinary. And suddenly like a storm — of wind, of gunfire, of teeth: life arrives.”

— Hélène Cixous, “Coming to Writing” and Other Essays

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Simone de Beauvoir, from Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926-27

Text ID: The day that I feel very loved, maybe I will take heart again; especially the day that I will love more. But will I love more?