Author Topic: A Question for Herr Hauser and Senor Raul  (Read 484856 times)

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Holden

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Re: A Question for Herr Hauser and Senor Raul
« Reply #15 on: July 03, 2020, 12:09:06 pm »
"It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves."

― Franz Kafka, The Trial
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Senor Raul
« Reply #16 on: July 03, 2020, 12:11:27 pm »
"... the best is undoubtedly not to love anyone, and for this we need to start from ourselves first."

Albert Caraco, Post Mortem
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Senor Raul
« Reply #17 on: July 03, 2020, 12:14:24 pm »
"What I need for my writing is seclusion, not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man."

―  Franz Kafka  (Letter to Felice, June 1913)
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Senor Raul
« Reply #18 on: July 03, 2020, 12:16:51 pm »
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
 
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Senor Raul
« Reply #19 on: July 03, 2020, 12:20:53 pm »

"My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves."

Hermann Hesse  (Demian, 1919)
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Steppenwolf
« Reply #20 on: July 03, 2020, 12:24:02 pm »
"I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself ; that beast astray who finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.”

― Hermann Hesse
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Senor Raul
« Reply #21 on: July 03, 2020, 12:27:23 pm »
"I just can't get used to life."

Eugene Ionesco
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Mainlander
« Reply #22 on: July 03, 2020, 02:06:56 pm »
"The knowledge that life is worthless is the flower of all human wisdom.”

-Philipp Mainlander
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Re: A Question for Herr Hauser and Senor Raul
« Reply #23 on: July 04, 2020, 07:10:58 am »
Holden,

Thank you for the quotes. They are most illuminating. I do not have quotes to share in the board.

I must have always said that existence is evil many times. If one spells backward evil you have live and also vile. If you add the letter d, you have devil. English is a wonderful language to build many words this way.

I only expect the worst here. At any time Saint Death will come. In fact every time I go to the pharmacy or supermaerket the security guard “kills” me with his thermometer. It is like shooting someone with a gun.

Stay well.

Holden

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Re: A Question for Herr Hauser and Senor Raul
« Reply #24 on: July 04, 2020, 04:37:49 pm »
Senor Raul,

My apologies for not writing sooner to you.Busy fighting with my inner demons. The monsoon( rainy season) has hit the city and hit it hard.
There are millions living in cardboard houses.There are quite a few very big predators in the city and I am a small fish, a minnow.

As someone keenly interested in history you might like to know that India lost a war with India back in '62 and a great deal of territory and until about the mid 1980s Indian economy was almost as big as China.

I wouldn't  want the country to go to war with them. They clearly are more powerful at the moment. But then, I am in a minority of one.
I have been doing a lot of thinking. About all sorts of things. Most of the things make me sad.

I like the rains, the sound of falling water. It feels like the world is about to end but it never does,does it?
I have been getting my TB medicines through on-line pharmacy, because of the drugs are not available locally.

I hope your eyes get better, or at the very least, do not get worse.
Here is something you might enjoy;



Please take care.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Say No to Life by Carlo Michelstaedter
« Reply #25 on: July 05, 2020, 08:01:16 am »
Holden,

Thank you for the link about Papa Doc Duvalier. Yes, we all have our demons. The demons are not only outside of us but also inside us as you well know.

It is good to hear that you are taking your medication without problems. I can say that you are war veteran because you are doing your best to avoid the predators wherever they are. 

As I age my eyes will suffer more. I have glaucoma, presbyopia, myopia and diabetes so my situation will get worse over time. I also suffer from sinusitis. As I say at any time I expect to get infected by the virus and end my earthly existence.

This week an 18-year old girl who was taking insulin was taken from Ciudad del Este, a city on the border with Brazil, to the city capital. She did not survive because of her condition. But also the hospital did not have the equipment to treat her for the virus. She died in the capital. And at the same time an 82-year old man was released from the hospital after recovering from COVID-19.

I heard of the long conflict that India has had with China. We will see what happens between the elephant and the dragon. By the way I read that in China they found that a new swine flu could become a new pandemic. The U.S. government has bought most of the world´s remdesivir, an antiviral drug for the COVID-19. It is very expensive, around US$ 400 per vial. Other countries are all excluded from accessing the drug. Business is business.

I understand that you would not want India to go to war. The problem is that India is a nuclear power. I am sure there are among the Indian military those who are eager to push the button and launch the warheads.

Like you most of the things make me sad. The Christians say that the true purpose of life is to prepare for life after death, so they saw domestic duties, family, houses, wage earning as barriers, whereas the the eremitic life, was the school of heaven.

Stay safe.



Holden

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Re: A Question for Herr Hauser and Senor Raul
« Reply #26 on: July 05, 2020, 06:07:04 pm »
Senor Raul,

Thanks for the video and the message.I have been thinking of some of the works by Dickens. He wrote in the Victorian England and though the ending of most of his books is unrealistically happy,the beginnings are always sad. Death at a very young age was the norm at that time.

People had as many as 8 or 10 kids and most of them died very soon. Maybe if I were born in that era I would have died already.But the modern medicine prolongs our misery.Dickens often wrote about orphans and how they were mistreated by their step-parents.
For instance,David Copperfield's father dies even before he was born. Then, he was happy with his mother but the mother decided to remarry when he was about four or five and the step father mistreated him a lot and sent him to a factory to work from which he runs away.

People were hanged for petty crimes and every hanging was like a super-hit movie. It was attended by great crowds.In his books, the head master of the school beats the students to a pulp, and because more often than not the child is an orphan there is no one there to protect him.And then there is the villan who is always scheming and trying to make money and force beautiful women to marry him.
I don’t care for the endings of his books but it do like the first part of his books.
Van Gogh once said he is postponing his suicide because he first wants to real A Christmas Carol.

Among the Paraguayan youth which profession at present is the most popular at the moment?
Take care.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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The Last Hangman
« Reply #27 on: July 06, 2020, 06:45:28 am »
Holden,

Your post reminded me of a tragic event that happened last week. On Friday, in Capiatá, a town near the capital, a police officer in the early hours of the morning killed his two children, his parents-in law, his 16-year old sister-in-law and then killed himself. The mother, like many women, is working in Spain. The police says that he killed them under the influence of alcohol.

Had I been born a century ago I would have died also very fast. The hangings remind me of a movie I saw many years ago. It was about Albert Pierrepoint (1905-1992). The movie was The Last Hangman. He executed more than 500 criminals.  After WW2 he executed German war criminals. Some say he showed a lot of respect to each criminal he executed and he made sure his executions were quick and humane. He combined his job as an executioner with his work as a pub owner. His father and uncle were also executioners.

With the pandemic many things have changed here. The most popular jobs were in marketing, community managers, industrial technicians, nurses, computer technicians, cashiers, and call centers.

As for the coronavirus here the elite has already decreed our physical elimination regardless of all these health measures imposed on us. I do not hate my fellow human beings for following these measures to the letter. I hate myself for complying with them. I am no different from the sheeple.

Stay well.





Holden

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Re: A Question for Herr Hauser and Senor Raul
« Reply #28 on: July 08, 2020, 04:50:49 pm »
Senor Raul,
I tried to read Joyce’s Ulysses but could not hack it about 12 years back. Its language was way too erudite for me. Now, I have managed to understand a little book.Its a strange book because the main characters are like shadowy puppets,they are not aware of themselves.
They are looking for sex, all of them, almost all the time. Strange book. And yet not so strange given the kind of life that I have had myself. Although I would definitely say that the book is no walk in the park.
When I go to bed ,its like I am getting ready to go to the movies.The most vivid dreams you could imagine. Except for the fact that I don’t have popcorn in the bed, its exactly like watching a movie.Although in these movies I am often also a character and feel pain and anxiety and what not.
The most vivid dreams one could possibly imagine.
Joyce, so I am told, has had a very difficult life. Why is it that most writers have very sad lives? I think everyone has a sad life, the only difference is, the writers, obviously enough, write about it.
When I was into that story, it was surreal, set sometime in 1905 in Dublin which I think is the capital of Ireland and the Catholic Church is said to be very powerful there. Almost omnipotent. Now its a rich country but at that point in time most of the people were very poor and lived very sad and tragic lives.
I wonder if Latin is taught in Paraguayan schools because it was taught in the Irish schools of the period and one of the lead characters Stephen ,is very good at it.
Take care my friend.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

raul

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Michael Collins eliminates the Cairo Gang
« Reply #29 on: July 09, 2020, 08:40:20 am »
Holden,

Thank you for your words. From what you tell me Joyce´s book is really strange with strange characters. Ireland reminds me of a movie I saw twenty years ago about Michael Collins and the Irish Republican Army and their struggle against the British Empire. Irish actor Liam Neeson played Michael Collins.

Yes, most writers had sad lives. You yourself have given many examples. Lucidity is a heavy burden for most of them.
I remember reading that in April 1951, the Iranian writer Sadegh Hedayat gassed himself in an apartment in Paris. Before that he attemped to commit suicide by throwing himself into the Marne. He failed because a couple was having
sex in a boat and they stopped to pull him out.

Hedayat said that “there were times when I wished I could be endowed after death with large hands, with long sensitive
fingers: I would carefully collect together all the atoms of my body and hold them tightly in my hands to prevent them, my property, from passing into the bodies of rabble-men.”

Would there be any room for future lucid writers after this pandemic? I doubt it. For the first time I heard a Paraguayan doctor speak about the “new normality”. This means a new step towards a dictatorship more brutal than the ones I read about. By the way a meteor was spotted burning up in the sky over China in October last year. Some say that when meteors appear it is a bad omen.

Latin was taught in secondary schools but in the 1990s the Ministry of Education changed the program and Latin was removed. I know that in the Faculty of Philosophy of the National University basic Latin is taught.  Apart from that Latin is taught in Catholic seminaries.

Most nights I can´t sleep well. I have panic attacks.  I get up and walk in my room and look out of the window. Well, life is a nightmare.

Take care.