"I was dismayed by how casually cruel or dismissive we are of people who find life too much to bear. The words that we use like 'they're a coward', 'they gave up', 'they gave in', are so unforgiving of what it actually means to be alive with a mind that torments you and a body you hate."

– Hanya Yanagihara, in an interview about "A Little Life

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh, Susan Sontag.

just in case no one has ever heard this part of the audiobook

that james baldwin quote where he says, “it took many years of vomiting up all the filth i’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before i was able to walk on the earth as though i had a right to be here.”

Li Huayi, Autumn Mountains, 2008

-Franz kafka

self-portrait against red wallpaper by Richard Siken

Degas at the Met.

Please know I saw "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" through 2 different hallways, and by sprinting in my effort to get there immediately, I nearly missed 3 whole additional rooms.

— Franz Kafka, Letter to his father

— February 12, 1922 / Franz Kafka diaries

NYC. 2024/02/23

Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan by Ilya Repin † Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco Goya and Peter Paul Rubens

when life has no meaning n u feel hopeless u must turn to russian literature to tell u to kill yourself

in summer wounds fester and in winter they ache. another one of life's classic no win scenarios

mutuals are people u wanna eat bread dipped in olive oil with

A Little Life, page 687 (paperback).

That dinner is Richard and India, Harold and Julia, Malcolm and Sophie, JB and his mother, and Andy and Jane, whose children are visiting Andy's brother in San Francisco. He starts to give a toast, thanking everyone for everything they have given him and done for him, but before he gets to the person he wants to thank the most --- Willem, sitting to his right --- he finds he cannot continue, and he looks up from his paper at his friends and sees that they are all going to cry, and so he stops.

He is enjoying the dinner, amused even by how people keep adding scoops of different food to his plate, even though he hasn't eaten much of his first serving, but he is so sleepy, and eventually he burrows back into the chair and closes his eyes, smiling as he listens to the familiar conversation, the familiar voices, fill the air around him.

Eventually Willem notices that he is falling asleep, and he hears him stand. "Okay," he says, "time for your diva exit," and turns the chair from the table and begins pushing it away toward their bedroom, and he uses the last of his strength to answer everyone's laughter, their song of goodbyes, to peek out around the wing of the chair and smile at them, letting his fingers trail behind him in an airy, theatrical wave. "Stay," he calls out as he is taken from them. "Please stay. Please stay and give Willem some decent conversation," and they agree they will; it isn't even seven, after all --- they have hours and hours. "I love you," he calls out to them, and they shout it back at him, all of them at once, although even in their chorus, he can still distinguish each individual voice.