Mashed Potatoes

Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment. Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.

No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning."

It is cognition that is the fantasy.... Everything I tell you now is mere words. Arrange them and rearrange them as I might, I will never be able to explain to you the form of Will... My explanation would only show the correlation between myself and that Will by means of a correlation on the verbal level. The negation of cognition thus correlates to the negation of language. For when those two pillars of Western humanism, individual cognition and evolutionary continuity, lose their meaning, language loses meaning. Existence ceases for the individuum as we know it, and all becomes chaos. You cease to be a unique entity unto yourself, but exist simply as chaos. And not just the chaos that is you; your chaos is also my chaos. To wit, existence is communication, and communication, existence.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.

Un droit que bien peu d’intellectuels se soucient de revendiquer, c’est le droit à l’errance, au vagabondage. Et pourtant, le vagabondage, c’est l’affranchissement, et la vie le long des routes, c’est la liberté. Rompre un jour bravement toutes les entraves dont la vie moderne et la faiblesse de notre cœur, sous prétexte de liberté, ont chargé notre geste, s’armer du bâton et de la besace symboliques, et s’en aller ! Pour qui connaît la valeur et aussi la délectable saveur de la solitaire liberté (car on n’est libre que tant qu’on est seul), l’acte de s’en aller est le plus courageux et le plus beau. Egoïste bonheur, peut-être. Mais c’est le bonheur, pour qui sait le goûter. Etre seul, être pauvre de besoins, être ignoré, étranger et chez soi partout, et marcher, solitaire et grand à la conquête du monde.

Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves.

Un voyage se passe de motifs. Il ne tarde pas à prouver qu'il se suffit à lui-même. On croit qu'on va faire un voyage, mais bientôt c'est le voyage qui vous fait, ou vous défait.

Nowadays we have reduced the world to a twentieth of the size it was 100 years ago. People can rush about frantically through the air. They certainly do not see the beauties of the world, and it is surely their responsibility to show that they make it better. It is a delusion to think that being able to move rapidly about from place to place makes people happier or wiser. As for the advantages of travel, they may be greatly exaggerated. In order to know anything about a country you must walk through it. You must sleep on its soil, pluck its foliage with your fingers. You must light your fires by its fiords and streams, and watch the dawn break beyond strange mountains.