Some "Big Bad World Lessons I would like to share with INTP's"
...and because "In quoting others, we cite ourselves."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds) I proceed to quote others:
"I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
so the following are a few of the lessons:
1-Beware your fixed conception of “realityâ€, beware the temptation of running away from it for too long:
"Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
"Before going back to sleep I imagined (I saw) a plastic universe, changeable, full of wondrous chance, an elastic sky, a sun that suddenly is missing or remains fixed or changes its shape."
— Julio Cortázar (Hopscotch)
2- Don’t expect “order†or “chaos†expect and enjoy surprises, let life surprise you and allow yourself to enjoy the process. Sometimes it’s not only about skills, it’s about daring and being forgiving with ourselves. Sometimes you can find victory in accepting that you have been defeated and that you have to start over again.:
"The fantastic breaks the crust of appearance … something grabs us by the shoulders to throw us outside ourselves. I have always known that the big surprises await us where we have learned to be surprised by nothing, that is, where we are not shocked by ruptures in the order."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
"I realized that searching was my symbol, the emblem of those who go out at night with nothing in mind, the motives of a destroyer of compasses."
— Julio Cortázar
"Skill alone cannot teach or produce a great short story, which condenses the obsession of the creature; it is a hallucinatory presence manifest from the first sentence to fascinate the reader, to make him lose contact with the dull reality that surrounds him, submerging him in another that is more intense and compelling."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
"All established order forms a line of resistance against the threat of rupture and places its meager forces at the service of continuity. That everything should continue as usual is the bourgeois standard of a reality that is indeed bourgeois precisely because it is a standard."
— — Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
"Memory weaves and traps us at the same time according to a scheme in which we do not participate: we should never speak of our memory, for it is anything but ours; it works on its own terms, it assists us while deceiving us or perhaps deceives up to assist us."
— — Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
3- Beware your preconceived notions of love and relationships. Beware being too comfortable. Being comforted shouldn't be enough. Reconcile with the fact that you can find someone who can really share those secret and fantastic world’s of yours and that that someone and the way you meet will be nothing like you have imagined/designed/planned it. What many people call loving is the act of choosing a good enough women and marrying her. They choose her, I swear. As if they could choose and expect love, as if it weren’t a ray that freezes you and reaches your bone marrow until it leaves you planted in the middle of the patio, cold and terrified. But don’t expect it being a bolt, or to freeze you or to happen in any way..just don’t expect ☺ it’s a “complex ecosystem†just like Economy, the Internet, Social Networks and the Amazon…and that doesn’t stop anyone from venturing and enjoying those things:
"I have never described this to you before, not so much, I don't think, from lack of truthfulness as that, just naturally, one is not going to explain to people at large that from time to time one vomits up a small rabbit."
— Julio Cortázar
"We walked without looking for each other, we walked being certain that we would find each other"
— Julio Cortázar (Rayuela)
"Come sleep with me: We won't make Love,Love will make us."
— Julio Cortázar
"She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste."
— Julio Cortázar (Hopscotch)
"You look at me, you look at me closely, each time closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer each time and our eyes grow, they grow closer, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing confusion, their mouths find each other and fight warmly, biting with their lips, resting their tongues lightly on their teeth, playing in their caverns where the heavy air comes and goes with the scent of an old perfume and silence. Then my hands want to hide in your hair, slowly stroke the depth of your hair while we kiss with mouths full of flowers or fish, of living movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite each other, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a short and terrible surge of breath, that instant death is beauty. And there is a single saliva and a single flavour of ripe fruit, and I can feel you shiver against me like a moon on the water."
— Julio Cortázar
"For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
4- Don’t be afraid of being foolish:
"Now that I think about it, it seems to me that’s what Idiocy is: the ability to be enthusiastic all the time about anything you like, so that a drawing on the wall does not have to be diminished by the memory of the frescoes of Giotto in Padua."
— Julio Cortázar (Around the Day in Eighty Worlds)
"Happy was she who could believe without seeing, who was at one with the duration and continuity of life."
— Julio Cortázar (Hopscotch)