5
" We know that the world operates on a whim, a system of coincidences. There are two basic coping mechanisms. One consists of dreading the chaos, fighting it and abusing oneself after lost, building a structured life ... in which every decision is a reaction against the fear of the worst ... This is the life that cannot be won, but it does offer the comfort of battle - the human heart is content when distracted by war. The second mechanism is an across-the-board acceptance of the absurd all around us ... This is the way to survive in this world, to walk up in the morning ... and exclaim, 'How unlikely! Yet here we are,' and have a laugh, and swim in the chaos, swim without fear, swim without expectation but always with an appreciation of every whim, the beauty of screwball twists and jerk that pump blood through our emaciated veins. "
― , Spaceman of Bohemia
8
" It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill. "
― Neil Gaiman , Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
14
" And one cold Tuesday in December, when Marie-Laure has been blind for over a year, her father walks her up rue Cuvier to the edge of the Jardin des Plantes." Here, ma chérie, is the path we take every morning. Through the cedars up ahead is the Grand Gallery." " I know, Papa." He picks her up and spins her around three times. " Now," he says, " you're going to take us home." Her mouth drops open." I want you to think of the model, Marie." " But I can't possibly!" " I'm one step behind you. I won't let anything happen. You have your cane. You know where you are." " I do not!" " You do." Exasperation. She cannot even say if the gardens are ahead or behind." Calm yourself, Marie. One centimeter at a time." " I'm far, Papa. Six blocks, at least." " Six blocks is exactly right. Use logic. Which way should we go first?" The world pivots and rumbles. Crows shout, brakes hiss, someone to her left bangs something metal with what might be a hammer. She shuffles forward until the tip of her cane floats in space. The edge of a curb? A pond, a staircase, a cliff? She turns ninety degrees. Three steps forward. Now her cane finds the base of a wall. " Papa?" " I'm here." Six paces seven paces eight. A roar of noise - an exterminator just leaving a house, pump bellowing - overtakes them. Twelve paces farther on, the bell tied around the handle of a shop door rings, and two women came out, jostling her as they pass.Marie-Laure drops her cane; she begins to cry. Her father lifts her, holds her to his narrow chest." It's so big," she whispers." You can do this, Marie." She cannot. "
16
" The first objection is that it is rubbish to talk about natural meanings and purposes, because we merely imagine such things. According to the objector's way of thinking, meanings and purposes aren't natural—they aren't really in the things themselves—they are merely in the eye of the beholder. But is this true? Take the lungs, for example. When we say that their purpose is to oxygenate the blood, are we just making that up? Of course not. The purpose of oxygenation isn't in the eye of the beholder; it's in the design of the lungs themselves. There is no reason for us to have lungs apart from it. Suppose a young man is more interested in using his lungs to get high by sniffing glue. What would you think of me if I said, “That's interesting—I guess the purpose of my lungs is to oxygenate my blood, but the purpose of his lungs is to get high?” You'd think me a fool, and rightly so. By sniffing glue, he doesn't change the purpose built into his lungs, he only violates it. We can ascertain the purposes of the other features of our design in the same way. The purpose of the eyes is to see, the purpose of the heart is to pump blood, the purpose of the thumb is to oppose the fingers so as to grasp, the purpose of the capacity for anger is to protect endangered goods, and so on. If we can ascertain the meanings and purposes of all those other powers, there is no reason to think that we cannot ascertain the meanings and purposes of the sexual powers. Natural function and personal meaning are not alien to each other. They are connected. In a rightly ordered way of thinking, they turn out to be different angles of vision on the same thing.
The second objection is that it doesn't make any difference even if we can ascertain the meanings or purposes of the sexual powers, because an is does not imply an ought. This dogma too is false. If the purpose of eyes is to see, then eyes that see well are good eyes, and eyes that see poorly are poor ones. Given their purpose, this is what it means for eyes to be good. Moreover, good is to be pursued; the appropriateness of pursuing it is what it means for anything to be good. Therefore, the appropriate thing to do with poor eyes is try to turn them into good ones. If it really were impossible to derive an ought from the is of the human design, then the practice of medicine would make no sense. Neither would the practice of health education. Consider the young glue-sniffer again. How should we advise him? Is the purpose of his lungs irrelevant? Should we say to him, “Sniff all you want, because an is does not imply an ought”? Of course not; we should advise him to kick the habit. We ought to respect the is of our design. Nothing in us should be put into action in a way that flouts its inbuilt meanings and purposes. "
― J. Budziszewski , On the Meaning of Sex
18
" Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living?
You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy…
You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess: you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you’ve had to do with this is as far you’ve got And something tellys you, you’re not going much farther if any.
And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering…
…Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn’t see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities, You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn’t so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing stil. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren’t a kid any more.
So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of ‘em is right, they’re just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. All you can do is go on like this other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manute Hating it. Hating yourself.
And hoping. "
― Jim Thompson , A Hell of a Woman
