The Triumph of Aimless Destiny:
Amor Fati, Intensity, Action

All beginnings begin in the middle, anonymously.

The catastrophe gives birth to reality.

Morning after morning the gift of the sun—the unrepeatable ecstasy of waking up.

Do to do.

“All those who suffer in the world do so because of their desire for their own happiness.”

—S

“A perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.”

—T. H.

Skyward and earthward the griefless grass greens.

Thrown into the world, the wonderer weeps with gratitude.

Joyfully the wanderer abandons the known to return to the unknown.

?, ?-?, Paris?

Undistracted by destinations, you travel to travel, undiverted by goals.

The earth consumes me.

And if I never knew terror, what else would I not know?

Who knows what the body will be able to do when the mind lays down its defenses?

“It is part of human nature to hate the man you have hurt.”

—P. C. T.

“I hate and I love: why I do so you may well ask.
I do not know, but I feel it happen and am in agony.”

—G. V. C.

Fate never struggles. Neither does the lover of fate.

Why does astonishment flash intermittent when seeing and feeling are nonstop wonders?

When both doer and deed disappear in the doing—beauty appears, truth inheres.

1400, Cambrai-1474, Cambrai

I pay homage to the golden calf, gastrocnemius extraordinaire.

To love life like life loves itself—ecstatically.

To know now’s flashing flux of thisness, touch the radiant crossing.

The luminous act reveals reality’s dark corners.

 “Ignorance is not innocence…”

—R. B.

“Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant.”

—J. A.

No hope, no fear, no conflict—just a serene welcoming of the other bearing his strange gifts.

Darkness too has its intensities, as variegated as the play of colors in light.

Some doors only open for the keyless.

1440, Saint Quentin-1521, Condé-sur-Escaut

The distance between this moment and the next is immeasurable, but the knee knows how to traverse the measureless void—not by hastening from here to there, but by bending from now to now.

Love the unknown as the known.

Like a wide-eyed falcon in unhungry flight.

The secret of the dance: do, let do.

“The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow”

—P. B. S.

“And desire shall fail.”

—E.

How to love uncertainty—life’s most beautiful problem.

The otherlover lets the touch of the other turn his world.

Because trees act, humans can too.

1685, Eisenach-1750, Leipzig

Swinging from side to side, my hips keep me in balance.

The incontrovertibility of aimlessness.

The only answer to the only question: Yes!

When every breath says yes, pleasure and pain rejoin, regain their undivided magnificence.

 “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love…”

—J. S.

“Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.”

—A. C.

The friend of chance is at home in the wandering.

Always there to remind me, the taste of life fills my mouth.

The grower of beauty tends the flowers of ugliness.

1756, Salzburg-1791, Vienna

The dick conspires with the mind—what’s love got to do with it?

Gratefully I dance with all comers.

The thunderclap resounds in silence.

To act on the impossible is to transform the possible.

 “Asking the ignorant to use the incomprehensible to decide the unknowable.”

—H. Z.

“Ignorant armies clash by night.”

—M. A.

Since life plays with me, I will play with life.

Speak less, say more.

When doing circles to knowing circles to not-knowing circles to not-doing, the doer vanishes in the empty center.

1862, Saint Germain-en-Laye-1918, Paris

My ass is wiser than I am—it knows when to let go.

The eternal fatalist knows—every moment lasts forever.

Following the möbius folds of versible sensation, the fluxible mind knows the perversubtle pain of pleasure, the pleasure of pain.

Lean into it.

“He who has few things to desire cannot have many to fear.”

—W. B.

“This life is a hospital in which each patient is obsessed with the desire to change beds.”

—C. B.

Sweetly the (n)one-many sways from solitude to multitude.

What is intensity? Nothing but the difference that difference makes.

There is no rehearsal, there are no players—from singular act to singular act the play plays itself.

1881, Nagyszentmiklós-1945, New York

The sacrum is sacred.

Now, now, now death comes—the lover welcomes a fateful friend.

Beyond all beyonding burns the ever-turning point of no return.

Outside before-and-after the act strikes.

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself.”

—H. H.

“Great hatred, little room.”

—W. B. Y.

Scientia amoris: the art of catastrophe.

Sloughing off selfmade, selfmaking moods, the nude mind shines, reflects the naked world’s light not-thing-ness.

Unclouded by lack or excess, lucent loverless love .

1882, Oranienbaum-1971, New York

What have I put in my belly today?

Now: no one waiting for nothing: here.

Once upon a time there was no once, no up, no on, no a, no time, no there, no was, no no.

It goes without saying he goes without going—going he stays, leaving no-one behind.

“Rather proud of knowing nothing.”

—I. M.

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

—G. O. (E. B.)

The brave befriend—no, belove—their demons.

Friends, roamers, starrymen—lend me your speed.

A masterless smile disarms the wary.

1883, Paris-1965, New York City

My ribs hold me up while I’m living; when I’m dead they’ll embrace the emptiness.

Overcome by pitiless tenderness for the passionate passing of all coming to be.

The hero sleeps as intensely as he flies.

The pure act burns itself away.

“Desire, for hire, would tire a shire.”

—J. J.

“There is nothing like desire for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one’s mind.”

—M. P.

No need to make yourself believe a or b, just see—and O!

Lawful or lawless will-less life flows—will you flow with or against?

To make one’s death a gift.

1905, La Spezia-1988, Rome

The curve of the spine is the curve of sensation—life turning to feel itself.

The sun scatters time’s dark matter.

Intensity indiscriminately pursued destroys intention.

Virtuoso of the irredeemable, he saves no one—least of all himself.

“Our capacity for disgust…is in proportion to the intensity of our attachment to the things of this world.”

—T. M.

“We make our friends; we make our enemies…”

—G. K. C.

True revolution turns to revelation.

Wherever clocks strike, the untimid untimely strike back singing the Organum of the Timesmashers.

There is no action in fear.

1908, Avignon-1992, Clichy

The sun blazes in my lungs, rhythmic powerhouse of combustion.

To look, one has to look away, the gaze that returns no longer the gaze that departed. In between the rising visions the visible renews itself.

Beneath the parade of flickering images, the mind feels its luminous coherence.

The ignorant are always thinking.

“All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.”

—T. S. E.

“Love comes from blindness.”

—R. R.

Television’s greatest casualty: the intimacy of seeing and reality.

Intimacy sees from in.

The pure action hides nothing; shows nothing except itself.

1922, Braïla-2001, Paris

…scapula…scraps…scape…

moonscape…seascape…dreamscape…

escape…

Beware of philosophers who don’t know how to laugh.

Love expands.

The canny adventurer turns without struggling; life delighted turns him to the light.

 “And weariness treads on desire.”

—G. P.

“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.”

—R. F.

Life is the midwife.

To own something is to kill it.

Because it’s there, one acts.

1923, Dicsöszentmárton-2006, Vienna

…knack…neck…nick…knock…nook…

Ugliness a misperception not only of what’s there but also of what isn’t.

Death throws me beyond myself into the mystery of otherness.

Selfing is not acting.

“Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.”

—G. E. (M. E.)

“Anger supplies the arms.”

—P. V. M.

To enjoy ecstasy, one must know fear.

Some of life’s intensities are reserved for the dying.

Desiring is not acting.

1924, Venice-1990, Venice

…mouth…mirth…myth…math…

When the mind loves the body, the body believes the mind.

The big and the hard yield to the soft and the small.

Between passion and action, letting and letting go—a fateful chasm.

“You are blind in your ears and mind, as well as your eyes.”

—S.

“A blind man in a dark room—looking for a black hat—which isn’t there.”

—C. B.

The sun shines and the rain rains—let life live!

The suffering of losing or the joy of giving. The difference? Ownership asserted or relinquished.

Planning is not acting.

1925, Montbrison-

The nose knows no nos.

O rain…teach me how to fall!

The shadowhero sleeps in luminous peace.

Knowing shows itself; the knower vanishes.

“I hear a very gentle sound,
With your ear down to the ground:
we want the world and we want it now!”

—J. M.

“It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.”

—H.

Life is not a sickness; it doesn’t need a cure.

So many who want the heat of love cannot bear its illumination.

The life-and-death turning points of everyday life.

1925, Oneglia-2003, Rome

Sounds appear and disappear—now they’re here, now not-here—this arouses no fear in the ears.

Smiling with satisfaction,
smiling with hunger.

Fearlessly during—before and after fall away.

The mind that sings forgets to think.

“Causing fear is what constitutes evil.”

—M. D.

“Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.”

—J. B.

From moment to moment I pour myself, leaving no self behind.

Do you deny yourself happiness? Then why deny yourself suffering?

Life aspires to shadowless act.

1931, Christopol-

For the eyes to see, the I must die.

Jubilantly welcoming the inevitable moment of reversal.

The brave warrior neither attacks nor defends—he rises up to fall into each bottomless moment.

The light colorless middledweller feels actively, acts receptively.

“In the country of the blind.”

—D. E.

“O blynde world, O blynde entencioun.”

—G. C.

Surrendering to the swerve.

Mourning unmoored becomes wisdom.

Passion adheres, action coheres.

1935, Paide-

He got himself out of his head so the world could get in.

See like nobody’s seeing, feel like nobody’s looking, think like nobody’s thinking.

Anything can happen in the transition.

Action moves from here to now, never from there to then.

 “Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.”

—D.

“The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this ‘craving void’ which drives us… to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”

—G. G. B.

Fate is now. Next is nothing to it.

Intensification through pliplification.

When you have to shit, shit.

1947, Palermo-

Have you smelled an armpit today?

Maybe you can’t stop thinking metaphorically—but you can stop living metaphorically.

The tendency of the confined to confuse constriction with intensity.

Now is now is all you know, and all you need to do.

 “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

—E. B.

“However it was fear…that made you good.”

—M. T. C.

The joyful fatalist takes no less and no more than what life gives; he always gives back more.

Mozart never saved any notes for tomorrow.

Mirrorless doing dispels the self.

1952, Karlsruhe-

From the charming arms to the freethinking teeth, from the elegant legs to the upbeat feet—contemplating the extraordinary harmonies of the bodyful body is a bracing shot in the arm.

To master disaster celebrate catastrophe.

Paradox welcomes the exiles of reason.

Nothing in common between the resistance of love and the resistance of hate.

“all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again”

—e. e. c.

“The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.”

—B. D.

Commitment: to take refuge in the unknowability of the future—and of the present; likewise, of the past.

Dispossessed, mind and body converge in glorious revelation.

Being becomes yes.

1952, Helsinki-

There’s always more elbowroom outside the mind.

The forever lover refuses second chances.

Intensity loves anonymity.

Naming is not acting.

“The glutton castaway, the drunkard in the desert, the lecher in prison, they are the happy ones. To hunger, thirst, lust, every day afresh and every day in vain, after the old prog, the old booze, the old whores, that's the nearest we'll ever get to felicity, the new porch and the very latest garden.”

—S. B.

“Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.”

—E. D.

Choiceless liberation.

Rejecting is not rejoicing.

Choosing is not acting.

1971, London-

To know the back of your hand like the back of your hand, let the bird go.

Without the wisdom to love all one’s mothers amor fati is impossible.

Everything depends on the red knife-edge inside the white moment.

Yes again.

“Fear first made gods in the world.”

—P. P. S.

“How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?”

—J. C.

Fate lives on the skin—the touch of the other makes it quiver, twist and turn.

Now o’clock sharp, the fatherless act cuts through time’s delusions.

Every act must clear a space for acting.

Body is truth, truth body.
This is all.