Tag: books

After the Vacation

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

After the vacation comes
the brain fog,
the arduous task to reaccept the status quo,
and the quicksand that gradually swallows you
back into the routine you escaped from.

Even though you’ve come back (refreshed) to conquer,
You’re procrastinating still, snoozing, postponing
the great battle.
The warrior’s armor waits for you in the closet.
Your heart still hasn’t synchronized with
the rhythm of the hammer striking the anvil.

But you must get up anyway.
So, you get up now.
You get out of bed.

There’s work to be done.

A cold shower,
then coffee.

You wear your armor.

The sun rises to meet a clear, blue sky
that appears to have never met dark, grey clouds.
But you remember the winter storms.
You remember every war you’ve won.

If God wills it,
you will win this one, too.

And when you’re done,
the boulder will rest on the top of the hill,
and it will never roll back down.


Quotes from Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Quotes from Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Here I am revisiting Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
Here I am looking for death again — Thanatos, my old friend.
Does this mean that I will go back to reading books like Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, etc.?
Does this mean that I will go back to saying that life is driven by death?
We shall see.
Maybe I’ll say, We are nothing but instances of self-conscious Death.
Later.
For now, I’ll be saving the quotes I like in a blog post and call it a day.
Outside, the birds are singing, and that’s where I need to be.

Quotes from Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle

It must be pointed out, however, that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such a dominance existed, the immense majority of our mental processes would have to be accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure, whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such conclusion.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Most of the unpleasure we experience is perceptual unpleasure.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

“Anxiety” describes a particular state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even though it may be an unknown one. “Fear” requires a definite object of which to be afraid. “Fright”, however, is the name we give to the state a person gets into when he has run into danger without being prepared for it; it emphasizes the factor of surprise.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

In this way the first instinct came into being: the instinct to return to the inanimate state.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

What we are left with is the fact that the organism wishes to die only in its own fashion.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

We shall find courage to assume that there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat which overrides the pleasure principle.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

The pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
La Aurora Preferidos Diamond Broadleaf Robusto

Have a Cigar: La Aurora Preferidos 1903 Edition Broadleaf Robusto

Chris Khatsch1 Comment

Name: La Aurora Preferidos 1903 Edition Broadleaf Robusto

Country: Dominican Republic

Shape: Parejo

Size: Robusto (5 inches x 50)

Strength: Full

I’m glad I’m reading again. I read four books in less than one month, and Eyeless In Gaza is the fifth one. The first was Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. The second was Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols. The third was Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. And the fourth was The Maths of Life and Death by Kit Yates. All of them, without exception, were great books.

The other day, I tweeted something about The Maths of Life and Death and mentioned Kit Yates, the author of the book, in my tweet. I was surprised when he retweeted me. Didn’t see it coming. It made my day.

It also made me think of something: Most of the writers I like are dead. I should read more books whose authors are still alive.

Now I’m in the sixth chapter of Eyeless In Gaza. Not much has happened so far, but Huxley’s prose style is irresistibly elegant. I like his metaphors and the literary references he makes.

The man sees things.
The man knows things.