Thursday, February 4, 2010

Ambition in a corporeally contained consciousness is pointless to the point of obscenity. For when the blast opens your chest, or the chemicals corrode your liver, or the automobile smashes your spine, or the disease devours your brain, or the cricket bat flattens the back of your head, or the decay triumphs as it must, you discover that all mortal ambition definitively reduces to a bloody smear, and that all that stress you suffered in pursuit of something was for nothing, and you could have instead spent your finite days relaxing and reading philosophy.

3 comments:

Koona said...

...from books that are the products of others' ambition from rough draft to bookshelf (or is that a display shelf?)

Radigan Neuhalfen said...

Aristocratic boredom, artistic fervor, lonesome desperation, sublime insanity... Ambition can not be the only factor motivating the creation of books.

Koona said...

Yes! "From the overflow of the heart a man speaks," or writes. Which of those factors you mentioned motivate/s you the most?

Maybe I interpreted ambition as number 2 while you meant it in the sense of number 1 (definitions of "ambition" from dictionary.com):

1.an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment

2.the object, state, or result desired or sought after

(I like those adjective-noun pairs, by the way ("aristocratic boredom," etc.); cool how they average six syllables each, with the adjectiviin syllables decrescendoing and the nounii syllables vice a versa. Besides the fact that it's nice writing.)