Untitled

I want to sleep on the street at night, with the chill ground underneath me. I want to dance with my eyes closed in the center of the floor, feeling strangers’ bodies moving and the music pounding in my head until I’ve lost track of where I am, and who I am and the only thing left is the movement, driving fast and wild.
I want to stand in the storm, soaked by the rain and listen to the thunder rage around me. I want to scream at the moon until there’s no sound left in my throat and no energy left in my body. I want to hunt with animals, silent and fierce, tearing at raw flesh with my teeth and tasting death’s warm blood in my mouth. I want to race my car at a hundred miles an hour and crash it into a cement wall; shattering glass and twisting metal all around me, the sound screaming in my ears. I want to cut myself with a razor, watch myself bleed onto a cold stone floor until I slip away.
I need a sensation to remind me I’m alive, something extreme; something harsh, cold, searing, electric, piercing. Something wild to wake up my half-beating heart. I want to build my own house, to swing an axe, to feel sweat on my brow, to exert myself. I tell myself that I’m happy–look at all I have–but I’m deceiving myself. I want a grand passion.
You color my dreams–vivid thoughts, stories interweaving, that I can’t believe I think of myself. But I awake and they slip away, I snatch at them but the roll away from me as ink on a wax surface. It seems futile for me to write anything, because I have no new commentary on the human condition that is unique and original. But I’ve been lonely and hungry for something practically all of my life.

Continue ReadingUntitled

Jane Austen

letter of August 1796, On arriving in London:
Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted.

letter of October 27 1798:
Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.

letter of December 24, 1798:
I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve.

letter of January 21, 1799:
I had a very pleasant evening, however, though you will probably find out that there was no particular reason for it; but I do not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it.

letter of October 25 1800, On the weather:
We have been exceedingly busy ever since you went away. In the first place we have had to rejoice two or three times everyday at your having such very delightful weather for the whole of your journey…

letter of January 7, 1807:
You will have a great deal of unreserved discourse with Mrs. K., I dare say, upon this subject, as well as upon many other of our family matters. Abuse everybody but me.

letter of May 31, 1811, On the Peninsular War:
How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!

letter of May 31 1811:
I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.

Continue ReadingJane Austen