reading Frankenstein in high school was so jarring after only knowing about it from tv shows and shit. imagine my shock when it turns out victor frankenstein was actually just a bitchass college dropout and the monster was ridiculously fucking eloquent. plot twist of the goddamned century.
media depiction of the monster: grunting and shambling. only uses very basic sentences.”fire bad! >:( me angry!!”
canonical monster: “ You are in the wrong, and instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my archenemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth.“
rainy morning tokyo.
Cy Twombly, Untitled (Roma), 1962
These ancient mosaic fragments, slightly submerged in the sea, can be found on a deserted stretch of minor road on the East coast of the Greek mainland, untended, unsignposted, unnoticed.
A: I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.”
“Nowhere, beloved, can world exist, but within. Life passes in transformation. And, ever diminishing, what is outside vanishes.”— R.M. Rilke, The Duino Elegies (Seventh Elegy), trans. Spender & Leishman)
Turning the page to 2019
*walks around my house looking for scissors while making a scissor motion with my fingers*
Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the spectre of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that one’s sanity becomes an object of speculation among one’s acquaintances. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.
- Joan Didion, On Self-Respect.
According to Greek Mythology, the island of Delos is the birthplace of Apollo.