La Chimera (2023)

Dostoevsky is one of those writers who, after showing you your fragmental vileness and natural disfigurement, teach you why you need to learn to love yourself.

— Anaïs Nin, from The Voice

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Edward Sackville-West written c. September 1926

I’ll never not sob over these 2 shots.

dostoevsky was so funny in the sense that he’ll start a story/novel by saying “and please forgive me if i’ve omitted important details or facts, but if i mention everything with full explanation i would fill a very large volume!” and then describes every little thing, emotion, feeling and thought his characters are having like yes king !! go off the rails !! oh you’re saying 400 pages aren’t enough for your little story?? no worries!! cause we don’t mind reading a 700+ page retelling of a story !! people in their teens and 20 somethings yearn for your writings !!!

I'm not sure if I dreamt it, thought it up, or just read it somewhere.

But I had this notion that some of us can relate to the moon more than we'd think and not for the typical reasons like loneliness and such, but for wanting a self.

The moon... Half of it is hidden, and the other half can only be seen by the reflection of the sun's light, not its own. Even this is controlled by other entities, i.e. the sun and the earth. The moon cannot even control how much of it will be visible and how much hidden and not even when. The moon exists by other entities' rules. The moon is wanting a self and agency. Perhaps that's where the notion of its loneliness comes from. We see the moon as beautiful and divine. Some even used to pray to it. What we don't see is what's behind that beauty. The moon is lonely in its suffering.

Quotes by Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath

"The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)

"ماذا تطوي في قلبك حتى فاض على سيماك؟"

-صلاح عبد الصبور