- Author: Rawi Hage
- Date Started: [[January 20th, 2024]]
- Date Finished: [[January 28th, 2024]]
Notes:
- Death and tears, he thought–– that's what it takes for this world to be made humble.
- "If you ask me, our state has managed to combine the worst of every system possible: pseudo-democracy with a deep theocratic foundation, while we pathologically live for our daily existence by old feudal norms."
- "He had read everything, too"
- He and I are lovers of heights, and admirers of gravity.
- Yes, he reasoned, weddings and burials are the same. Exactly the same. In both, weeping and celebration exist side by side. They are part of the dialectic that includes hermaphrodites and semi-gods, the Manichaean stripes of zebras, double agents in war movies, Siamese twins, divided cities, border rivers and Homeric sirens of the sea.
- [[Death]] makes one forgive and love again. We humans only value our losses and regrets.
- It's all just a [[dance]], Pavlov thought. And nothing is more devastating than a dance.
- Perhaps this was a banal killing, just because this fighter could–– in this time of lawlessness, in this age of carelessness and hate, in this civil war that opened windows of opportunity for the most impoverished, that elevated the deprived, the deranged, the meek with a yearning for bengeance and scores to settle.
- [[Veganism]], [[Jainism]]
- Pavolv himself had never approved of buying onions or garlic, or even the deep-red beets, because to his mind these were roots, and anything that had been buried underground should never be eaten.
- But our [[utilitarian]] species, Pavlov thought, only tolerates my kind when faced with their own bereavement.
- Suicide, the dog continued, in the most heroic act, which no animal save for man dares to commit or could ever contemplate.
- They are open books who feel their only redemption might be in everything else remaining open too, and everything openly said.
- Oh, the shining armour of this species that only ceased to glitter when dipped in blood.
- It was their bellies that expressed their state of mind, their visions of life, their convictions and causes–– including their persistent demands for possession of Pavlov's hearse. They were driven by the needs of their bellies to expand and conquer.
- Because even those who are all noot there, if you know what I mean, have something to contribute. [[Wisdom]] doesn't require full [[consciousness]].
- Departure is [[death]], he thought, but death is inconsequential for those who have departed.
- We worship fire because it is the closest sensation to what a man deels when love exists. Fire is a passage and a dance, but its destruction brings renewal.
- Perhaps the [[knowledge]] that everything in this world is to be feared is the only truthful state of being.