Dare to Dwell

"Chronic remorse... is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.... Art also has its morality, and many of the rules of this morality are the same as, or at least analogous to, the rules of ordinary ethics. Remorse, for example, is as undesirable in relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behaviour. The badness should be hunted out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one's middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth-- all this is surely vain and futile. And that is why this new Brave New World is the same as the old one. Its defects as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them I should have to rewrite the book-- and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I should probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of such merits as it originally possessed. And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else." ~Huxley

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Across Time


Sometimes it crosses my mind.  Music is on.

And I delve into a pool of emotions.  You might ask: yeah, who hasn't?  But regardless of how many times you've dipped into this pool, it continues to churn inside your heart.  

You learn to live indepedently, then together, then independently again.  You learn to live with friends, without, then with them again.  You learn that everything is transitory no matter how long you want it to last, and everything that lasts is transitory.  

You learn that desire burns, and responsibility washes it away, that anxiety agitates, and calmness alleviates, that lust flames, and love cements, that evilness lurks in the shadow of goodness.  Still, desire explodes, anxiety is stubborn, lust bursts, evilness sustains its darkness.  I try to combat its wrath, but I also can't help but continue imagining what it would be like if I let go.

Sometimes it crosses my mind.


What is it I truly long for?  
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