User Profile

The scientific method was a project begun as an attempt to understand nature’s splendour, but finished in total defilement. We started with trying to understand the mechanics of the heavens. We concluded with pleasure cruises and little plastic drinking straws. What had gone wrong? How had we learned to unhear the cosmic music? It was all fact without wonder.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

Once a child has tried chocolate, who could convince him fruit is better?

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

Is this real or a hallucination? The entity said, A question one should ask daily.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

Be kind, and when you can’t be kind, be fair. And when you can’t be fair, be clever. And when you can’t be clever, please be kind again.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

In some universe next door where everything is the same but for minor discrepancies, I did not become your father. Some almost-identical version of myself is sat at some almost-identical desk right now with a great hole in his heart he never found the occasion to fill, because he never found anything to be proud of, or to love. But I have been lucky enough to live in this universe where this man has something to be proud of, and to love, and she is the brightest and kindest daughter any father was ever blessed to have.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

There is nothing worse than to remain sober around those who are drinking. Their euphoria intensifies, while you only grow quietly embarrassed for them. At some point during the evening they will intuit you are judging their follies and become self-conscious. They will despise you for depriving them of the bliss of drunken excess by virtue of your watching. The reaction is much the same from the gluttonous, rich, and powerful when one reminds them that the resources of the environment are not infinite. They might continue to plunder, but they will hate you for bringing conscience into their debauchery, for turning the light on during the orgy. Why, the house was burning down, but we were so enjoying the glow. . .

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

Never buy cheap socks. Dance when you can. You’ll know when you’re in love. If you have to check, you’re not.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

I am alone, he thought. There is no one left in all of time and space who will love me without conditions. I must go into every battle as an army of one, if I choose to still fight. Everything is prickles and barbs. Or worse, no prickles and barbs, but grey. Unceasing, ever duller grey; living as a miraculous animal and feeling nothing; living as a king here perhaps, and feeling nothing. I was ugly before, but loved. Now I’m just ugly.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

It seemed to him suddenly that self-hate was the result of a misguided attempt to please people one would never meet, and if one did meet such judgemental idiots, one would not respect them nor desire their respect in the first place.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

You have spent years in subpar friendships and flings, Leo would say without stuttering. You have spent years lost, unable to find your place in the world. But all of this was to serve the function of demonstrating to you what love is not, so that when you came upon the real thing, you would know it by contrast to its previous imitations. I have been on that same pilgrimage. We have found each other now and I love you madly and unconditionally. We will go to parks and read together. We will come home and hold each other long into the small hours. We can live forevermore, side by side, in the Sunshine Middle of the World. The woman got off at the next outpost town. “Goodbye then,” she said. “Yes, bye,” Leo said.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

is the scientific model of reality not just another kind of magic, another absurd, fanciful delusion? The answer is: yes. However, it also happens to be the only delusion that doesn’t go away when one stops believing in it.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a

The true horror of existence is not the certainty of death, nor the threat of hell, but the knowledge that we will likely go our entire lives as impossibly complex machines, walking about in an impossibly complex universe, and never truly discover what it was all for. I don’t know is brave. I’ll never know is heroic.

— Geometry for Ocelots by Exurb1a