self help reading + music

from Women as Lovers, Elfriede Jelinek:

contentment flourishes here, one can see that
whoever is not made content by the landscape, is made completely content by children and husband. whoever is not made content by landscape, children and husband, is made completely content by work.
but our story begins somewhere else entirely: in the city.

here too women sew, which they like.
they don’t sew what they like, but sewing in itself is already in the women’s blood.
they only need to let this blood out.
this is peaceful women’s work.
many women sew half-heartedly, the other half of their heart is occupied by their family, some women sew with all their heart, it is not the very best who do that.
our story, which will soon be over, begins in the urban island of peace.
if someone experiences fate, then not here.
if someone has a fate, then it’s a man, if someone gets a fate, then it’s a woman.
sadly life passes one by here, only work remains.
sometimes one of the women tries to join the life that’s passing by and to chat a little.
sadly life then often drives off by car, too fast for the bicycle.

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from Drawn and Quartered: Stabs at Bewilderment, E.M. Cioran (I just cannot get enough of this guy lately. That deadpan tone, between a mortal thud and a littlebrotherly hard pinch to the upper arm):

In the usual boredom, we desire nothing, we lack even the curiosity to weep; in the excess of boredom it is just the contrary, for this excess incites us to action, and weeping is an action.

To be infatuated with lost causes leads one to suppose that they are all just that, and one is not entirely mistaken. (hahahah o boy)

Time, accomplice of exterminators, disposes of morality. Who, today, bears a grudge against Nebuchadnezzar? (I’m getting a t-shirt that reads “nebuchadnezzar”)

I have never been able to find out what being means, except sometimes in eminently nonphilosophical moments. (sewing?)

Conversation is fruitful only between minds given to consolidating their perplexities.

What can be said, lacks reality. Only what fails to make its way into words exists and counts.

We forget the body, but the body does not forget us . . .

Raintribe – Anyday Now (mp3)