tortuous-essays-blog

[tortuous-essays-blog]

No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

[tortuous-essays-blog]

This is the moment of truth, that fine and fateful line between control and disaster- which is also the difference between staying loose and weird on the streets, or spending the next five years of summer mornings playing basketball in the yard at Carson City.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

[tortuous-essays-blog]

But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country- but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

[tortuous-essays-blog]

How often does a chance like that come around? To jangle the bastards right down to the core of their spleens. Old Elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

[tortuous-essays-blog]

It occurred to me that if I were really losing my mind, I might end by murdering somebody. In fact- said high-and-dry Humbert to floundering Humbert - It might be quite clever to prepare things - to transfer the weapon from box to pocket - so as to be ready to take advantage of the spell of insanity when it does come.

'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov

[tortuous-essays-blog]

Thou glorious orb, supremely bright, just rising from the sea, To chear all nature with thy light, What are thy beams to me? In vain thy glories bid me rise, To hail the new-born day, Alas! my morning sacrifice Is still to weep and pray. For what are nature’s charms combin’d, To one, whose weary breast Can neither peace nor comfort find, Nor friend whereon to rest? Oh! Never! Never! whilst I live Can my heart’s anguish cease: Come, friendly death, thy mandate grave, And let me be at peace.

Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple

[tortuous-essays-blog]

I have never been normal about my body. It has always seemed to me a strange and foreign entity. I don't know that there was ever a time when I was not conscious of it. As far back as I can think, I was aware of my corporeality, my physical imposition on space.

Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

[tortuous-essays-blog]

So, having lived, it seems only proper to begin keeping track again, to record the flux of each self, and weigh the shifting landscape of this city. I've given much of myself to feed its insatiable, tick-ridden underbelly, and I expect the use of its character, without threats or intimidation, in return. If you haven't died by an age thought predetermined through the timing of your abuses and excesses, then what else is left to do but to begin another diary?

Jim Carroll, Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971-1973

[tortuous-essays-blog]

Now, my dear sober matron, (if a sober matron should deign to turn over these pages, before she trusts them to the eye of a darling daughter,) let me intreat you not to put on a grave face, and throw down the book in a passion and declare ‘tis enough to turn heads of half the girls in England; I do solemnly protest, my dear madam, I mean no more by what I have here advanced, than to ridicule those romantic girls, who foolishly imagine red coat and silver epaulet constitute the fine gentleman, they will imagine themselves so much in love as to fancy it a meritorious action to jump out of a pair of two stairs window, abandon their friends, and trust entirely to the honour of a man, who perhaps hardly knows the meaning of the word, and if he does, will be too much the modern man of refinement, to practice it in their favour.

Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple

[tortuous-essays-blog]

Such notions, I see now, are an indulgence. I inhabit a different body now. Each day, it seems, another self wakes up and heats the coffee. I can distinguish, even gauge, the passage from a disturbed youth to a disturbed adult by the subtle aggressiveness in my anxiety. Sometimes I catch myself sitting on the edge of the sofa, staring into the flickering glare of the television, like a deer on some highway transfixed in shock by the headlights of a car. As these images pass, I can feel them feeding my own inertia. Other times, I am overloaded with a smooth, graceful energy, filled with an almost incomprehensible joy.

Jim Carroll, Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971-1973

[tortuous-essays-blog]

The fact is, in many ways, I hadn't planned to make it to this age. I think of my past as if it were some exquisite antique knife...you can use it to defend yourself or slit your own throat, but you can't just keep it mounted on some wall. I can no longer allow the past, however, to interpret my future. Not dying young can be a dilemma.

Jim Carroll, Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries: 1971-1973

[tortuous-essays-blog]

'You want to play video games twenty-four hours a day?' 'Or watch. I just want to not be me. Whether it's sleeping or playing video games or riding my bike or studying. Giving my brain up. That's what's important.'

Ned Vizzini, It's Kind Of A Funny Story

[tortuous-essays-blog]

When we have excited curiosity, it is but an act of good nature to gratify it.

Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple

[tortuous-essays-blog]

Some of us use the body to convey things for which we cannot find words. Some of us decide to take a shortcut, decide the world is too much or too little, death is so easy, so smiling, so simple; and death is dramatic, a final 'fuck you' to the world.

Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

[tortuous-essays-blog]

We know we need, and so we acquire and acquire and eat and eat, past the point of bodily fullness, trying to sate a greater need. Ashamed of this, we turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how to not-need.

Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

[tortuous-essays-blog]

A year later, in the hospital, I will hide my face in my hands as a beautiful woman starts to cry in group while blurting out that she is afraid of her own passion, her physical passion, her desire for her lover. The rest of the group, embarrassed into silence, will stare at the floor, each of us pretending we don't know understand, we've never felt that.

Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

[tortuous-essays-blog]

Little kids shoot marbles Where the branches break the sun into graceful shafts of light... I just want to be pure.

Jim Carroll, The Basketball Diaries