21
" There is a sort of subdued pandemonium in the air, a note of repressed violence, as if the awaited explosion required the advent of some utterly minute detail, something microscopic but thoroughly unpremeditated, completely unexpected. In that sort of half-reverie which permits one to participate in an event and yet remain quite aloof, the little detail which was lacking began obscurely but insistently to coagulate, to assume a freakish, crystalline form, like the frost which gathers on the windowpane. And like those frost patterns which seem so bizarre, so utterly free and fantastic in design, but which are nevertheless determined by the most rigid laws, so this sensation which commenced to take form inside me seemed also to be giving obedience to ineluctable laws. My whole being was responding to the dictates of an ambience which it had never before experienced; that which I could call myself seemed to be contracting, condensing, shrinking from the stale, customary boundaries of the flesh whose perimeter knew only the modulations of the nerve ends.
And the more substantial, the more solid the core of me became, the more delicate and extravagant appeared the close, palpable reality out of which I was being squeezed. In the measure that I became more and more metallic, in the same measure the scene before my eyes became inflated. The state of tension was so finely drawn now that the introduction of a single foreign particle, even a microscopic particle, as I say, would have shattered everything. For the fraction of a second perhaps I experienced that utter clarity which the epileptic, it is
said, is given to know. In that moment I lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled its drama simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything was justified, supremely justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in blatant screamers; I felt the misery that was grinding itself out with pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty handkerchiefs.
On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a
phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open. "
― Henry Miller , Tropic of Cancer (Tropic, #1)
22
" [Alyosha] was to some extent a youth of our last epoch — that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal, such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Brothers Karamazov
23
" First of all, I'll tell you who I'm not. I'm not your enemy, so you can put the sharp pointy objects away,' he responded in a light conversational tone, obviously not deterred by my abrasiveness, which only pissed me off more to know he didn't find me to be a threat at all.
'Well, first of all, I'll be the judge of that,' I cut him off before he could continue. 'And second of all, I'm not interested in who you're not,' I added.
'So you're saying you're interested in who I am?' He gave me a moment to process what he said before a smile broke on his face.
My cheeks flamed. 'Hardly. Just interested in whether or not I'll be seeing you around again,' I was seething and beginning to shake with indignation.
'So you want to see me again? "
― Alicia Deters , Fading Darkness (The Bloodmarked Series, #1)
26
" He'd been a fool, he saw that now. How could he have thought, even for a minute, that they'd be safe out here in the suburbs? The world was violent, rotten, corrupt, seething with hatred and perversion, and there was no escaping it. Everything you worked for, everything you loved, had to be locked up as if you were in a castle under siege. "
― T. Coraghessan Boyle , If the River Was Whiskey
28
" Right from the start he is dressed in his best - his blacks and his whitesLittle Fauntleroy - quiffed and glossy,A Sunday suit, a wedding natty get-up,Standing in dunged strawUnder cobwebby beams, near the mud wall,Half of him legs, Shining-eyed, requiring nothing moreBut that mother's milk come back often.Everything else is in order, just as it is.Let the summer skies hold off, for the moment.This is just as he wants it.A little at a time, of each new thing, is best.Too much and too sudden is too frightening -When I block the light, a bulk from space,To let him in to his mother for a suck,He bolts a yard or two, then freezes,Staring from every hair in all directions,Ready for the worst, shut up in his hopeful religion,A little syllogismWith a wet blue-reddish muzzle, for God's thumb.You see all his hopes bustlingAs he reaches between the worn rails towardsThe topheavy oven of his mother.He trembles to grow, stretching his curl-tip tongue -What did cattle ever find hereTo make this dear little fellowSo eager to prepare himself?He is already in the race, and quivering to win -His new purpled eyeball swivel-jerksIn the elbowing push of his plans.Hungry people are getting hungrier,Butchers developing expertise and markets,But he just wobbles his tail - and glistensWithin his dapper profileUnaware of how his whole lineage Has been tied up.He shivers for feel of the world licking his side.He is like an ember - one glowOf lighting himself upWith the fuel of himself, breathing and brightening.Soon he'll plunge out, to scatter his seething joy,To be present at the grass,To be free on the surface of such a wideness,To find himself. To stand. T "
31
" The great city seemed to weigh upon me, as though it were crushing me under its heap of brick and stone. Gray, drizzly skies, congested streets, the soot-belching boats and barges chugging up and down the Thames, the teeming mass of four millions hastening about the countless activities of daily life in a metropolis, things adventurous, meaningful, spiritual, quotidian, futile, criminal, meaningless and absurd. Amidst this seething stew of humanity, I painted. "
― Gary Inbinder , The Flower to the Painter
32
" Asita wasn’t hungry this day, however. There were other ways to keep the prana, or life current, going. If he did visit the demon loka, it would take enormous prana to sustain his body. There would be no air for his lungs to breathe among the demons.
He allowed the brilliant Himalayan sun to dry his body as he walked above the tree line. Demons do not literally live on moun-taintops, but Asita had learned special powers that allowed him to penetrate the subtle world. He had to get as far away as possible from human beings to exercise these abilities. The atmosphere was dense around population. In Asita’s eyes a quiet village was a seething cauldron of emotions; every person—except only small infants—was immersed in a fog of confusion, a dense blanket of fears, wishes, memories, fantasy, and longing. This fog was so thick that the mind could barely pierce it. "
― Deepak Chopra , Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment