Cover artwork by Anton Biletskyi-Volokh, from an unpublished reusable sketchbook in progress.
A thematic selection of translated notebook fragments.
The greater the hope that an inner lack can be filled from outside, the greater the vulnerability.
Grief means experiencing and letting go of something that is impossible to let go of. For all its heaviness, the process later brings freedom.
And yet many people live as if there were a world bank of suffering, and if you suffer properly, that bank later pays out big dividends.
For many people, suffering provides a sense of biography, and giving it up is frightening: ‘Where am I in this scheme, then?’
Constant regret is like being unable to grieve: returning to a loss instead of letting it go.
It is always interesting to examine what makes suffering possible. What material and human resources sustain the possibility of remaining in the unbearable?
The range of plots for suffering is usually very narrow. Jouissance from the same old thing; suffering multi-jouissance is available to very few.
- If everything goes my way, I am bored. If it does not go my way, I am in pain.
A constant sense of depleted energy may be connected with a loss that has not been lived through.
Living through grief and letting go of a loss does not mean betraying what was lost.
Grieving is the gradual withdrawal of emotional investment from what will not be.
In the dramatic question ‘Are you hurting me accidentally or deliberately?’, the answer is usually not either-or but both-and.
Blaming is a trick for avoiding grief.
Pity is not the same as compassion. Compassion means empathising from an equal position. Pity is a way to place yourself above the person you pity.
Blame is a way of avoiding grief. Someone who has grieved does not look for someone to blame.
Suffering is a way of replacing inner movement with external bustle.
Indifference is a sign that something still hurts you. When it does not hurt, you feel steady rather than indifferent.
Giving up suffering is complicated by this: without suffering, you have to face the fact that the world is not evil and terrible, and that a person has no enemies but themselves.
Pity is a variety of contempt.
Endless regret is a way of avoiding grief.