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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 20h

“We all have a need for greater awareness, as it is through awareness that we discover how to break free from our suffering and create joy in its place. Every creative act is therefore also an act of compassion, because it helps to expand our awareness.”

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“Creativity Is Compassion”, etc. (191-195)

Every creative act makes explicit something that was previously unseen, and in doing so it helps those who encounter it see more of their own self and the world.

suliqyre.substack.com

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 1d

From Bataille's On Nietzsche

Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 1d

“Existence as entirety remains beyond any one meaning— and it is the conscious presence of humanness in the world inasmuch as this is nonmeaning, having nothing to do other than be what it is, no longer able to go beyond itself or give itself some kind of meaning through action.”

— Georges Bataille

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 1d

“An artist is always the most original and creative when they lean into their own style as much as possible. Doing this requires great honesty and courage, for it means revealing the self, and there is always a chance that an artwork expressing a unique self will be rejected by others.”

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190. The Search For Style

The artist’s concern is always style. It is the style of an artwork that most grants it aesthetic value, and it is this value that we most appreciate. The artist wants to develop a style that is beaut...

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 2d

From Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy

Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 2d

“Every gain has to be paid for: The automatic machine is fool-proof; but just because it is fool-proof it is also grace-proof. The man who tends such a machine is impervious to every form of aesthetic inspiration, whether of human or of genuinely spiritual origin.”

— Aldous Huxley

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 2d

“You keep thinking and imagining, visualizing alternative lives that don't exist, ones where you'd have the thing that's now missing. You realize this exercise is pointless. It's pointless because you can't change the past.”

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189. Stuck In The Past

You can’t stop replaying past events. You keep wondering if there might have been a better way, if you could have done something differently. Perhaps if you’d made a different choice, you might be in ...

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 3d

“Now, under the neoliberal regime of auto-exploitation, people are turning their aggression against themselves. This auto-aggressivity means that the exploited are not inclined to revolution so much as depression.”

— Byung-chul Han, Psychopolitics

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 4d

“She wants to expand, to be always growing. She wants to be unpredictable, to be always more than anyone can define. Being no one seems to supply the emptiness that fits her needs.”

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188. To Be Always More

She is standing alone when a man approaches and says hello. He looks altogether harmless, so she returns the greeting. They’re at a social event and meeting new people is what you’re supposed to do. H...

suliqyre.com

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 5d

“I am at this instant in a white void awaiting the next instant. Measuring time is just a working hypothesis. But whatever exists is perishable and this forces us to measure immutable and permanent time. It never began and never will end. Never.”

— Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 5d

“My attachment to my beliefs about productivity causes me to treat myself like a machine that must complete a certain amount of work over a certain amount of time. As a result, I withhold compassion from myself, my needs go unmet, and I suffer.”

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187. Productivity And Compassion

When I feel I’m not making enough progress, I can easily become frustrated. This is especially true when the source of the delay is my own carelessness. I’ve been doing something other than what I sho...

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 6d

The writer is the man who discovers the use of suffering in the economy of art — as the saints discovered the utility and necessity of suffering in the economy of salvation.”

— Susan Sontag, “The Artist As Exemplary Sufferer”

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 6d

“The writer is the exemplary sufferer because he has found both the deepest level of suffering and also a professional means to sublimate his suffering. As a man, he suffers; as a writer, he transforms his suffering into art.

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 6d

“The certainty of words does not seem to fit with the uncertainty of ourselves... The task of accuracy is never an easy one. It's a fight with language itself, a battle we must wage merely to communicate, and it often goes awry.”

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186. Words Say Too Much

The problem with language is that it always says too much. This is especially true when we’re trying to talk about how we feel. Our words come out sounding like a solemn declaration of fact, as though...

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 7d

“Our words come out sounding like a solemn declaration of fact, as though the emotions we're describing are substantial, permanent, and unchanging, when they might be none of these things.”

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suliqyre.substack.com/p/words-say-...

“Words Say Too Much”, etc. (186-190)

The task of accuracy is never an easy one. It's a fight with language itself, a battle we must wage merely to communicate, and it often goes awry.

suliqyre.substack.com

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 8d

From Eco's Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language

Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 8d

“The Zohar says that “in any word shine a thousand lights” (3.202a). The unlimitedness of the sense of a text is due to the free combinations of its signifiers, which in that text are linked together as they are only accidentally but which could be combined differently.”

— Umberto Eco

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 8d

“This is part of the tragedy of being human. The temporary nature of our existence means we are unable to achieve all of the things we want to achieve. There will always be something more we must leave undone. There will always be something we want that we will never have.”

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185. Endless Desire

You have a desire you cannot completely satisfy. You might be able to partly fulfill it, either now or in the future, but it will continue to exist because it is endless. You want more and more of the...

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 9d

It cannot be understood; it can only be accepted or rejected. If accepted we are revitalized; if rejected we are diminished.”

— Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 9d

“A great work of art, if it accomplishes anything, serves to remind us, or let us say to set us dreaming, of all that is fluid and intangible. Which is to say, the universe.

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 9d

“To claim that chaos is imminent because change is needed is a great exaggeration. Our normative agreements are all interconnected, but this is not a point of weakness, it is one of strength.”

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suliqyre.com/posts/rules-...

184. Rules And Rebellions

When there is a rule that feels wrong or harmful, we might rebel against it. A tension has formed between us and the rule. The rule says we ought to do something, but we can see it’s better to act in ...

suliqyre.com

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 10d

There is no more fiction that life could possibly confront, even victoriously — it is reality itself that disappears utterly in the game of reality — radical disenchantment, the cool and cybernetic phase following the hot stage of fantasy.”

— Jean Baudrillard, Simulations

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 10d

“The old slogan ‘truth is stranger than fiction,’ that still corresponded to the surrealist phase of this estheticization of life, is obsolete.

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 11d

“A day is not long but terrifyingly short from this place of unlimited rumination, searching, and striving to reach what cannot even be located. The hours pass one after the other, and at the end of each one I'm still the same.”

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suliqyre.com/posts/until-...

183. Until I No Longer Can

Another hour has vanished. I stare at the clock in disbelief, but the time is correct. An entire hour is gone, and I have done nothing. Time is passing quickly not because I’m fruitfully occupied but ...

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Suli Qyre @suliqyre.com · 12d

“Pleasure in color, form, and movement, awareness of the amazing diversity of life, and the enjoyment of natural beauty are part of man’s heritage as a living creature.”

— Rachel Carson, Lost Woods

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