The following is an incomplete list of things or people I found some inspiration in, sometimes accompanied by a brief description and in no particular order. I encourage you to reflect on, and find, what inspires you, as inspiration helps color the world in a particularly pleasant and envigorating way.
A masterful literary illusion, ambiguously comedic and tragic — and what better pairing! It's an entertaining insight into the human condition, our need to engross ourselves in a cause and to suffer for that cause.
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!
G.E.B. so wonderfully intertwines the disciplines in an unusually technical way. It provides so much fodder for thought to an inquiring mind. I am fortunate to have been given this book by a friend during high school, which I slowly made my way through on the early morning bus rides. It introduced me to countless new concepts and caused me to develop a new perspective of conceptual aesthetic beauty.
"Roll the Dice" was initially published in this collection, a poem that was first shared with me during a particularly challenging moment in my life by a gentleman named Derek Moorehead (who was my admin at the time). I've returned to this poem often over the years.
Bukowski's work takes me through a cycle of admiring his honesty, being inspired by him, relating to him, pitying him, coming to view him as a cautionary tale, and back again, many times over. At times, he is a pessimist, and at others, an optimist. Sometimes, he is larger than life, and sometimes, he is enwrapped in the trivial. He is relentless, and he has given up.
If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
A well-worn copy of this book was lent to me by a colleague. Though it is a short book, I consumed it over several months, slowly making my way through over many flights in the moments when the slightly overworked and underappreciated flight attendants forced me to put my laptop away after asking for the third time.
Yet, I think I am the better for it, as I was able to meditate on each section of the text without urgency and without obligation. I find the ideas expressed stimulating, but moreover, I found myself inhabiting, if only briefly, a uniquely beautiful flow of thoughts as I imagine was experienced by a mind like Schrödinger's. The read is equally fulfilling of one's interest in physics, in biology, or in philosophy.
[...] the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive.
I believe I was introduced to this story at some time during childhood, but I can't recall the exact circumstances. I find myself rereading this story every couple years, which is a strong signal of the enduring mark it made on my mind.
The story is elegant and economical in it's exploration of the relationship between the positive and negative elements of the human condition — the relationship between joy and suffering, or prosperity and sacrifice — and equally effective in its invitation for you to examine your own intuitions on happiness.
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.