Words, etc.

• 2012-07-24

  

  Classy.

• 2012-07-22

  

  Spontaneous Human Combustion

• 2012-07-11

  

  Photo: Pavel Kassine

  Source: cruello

• 2012-06-30

  

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  Merge

• 2012-06-22

  

  “Four things greater than all things are women and horses and power and war.”
  -Rudyard Kipling

• 2012-05-21

  Litost

  I have always been fascinated by words. My most recent etymological enthrallment is a word unknown to the English language, “litost”. This a Czech word, uncommonly used and commonly misunderstood. I believe it is best defined as the sudden experience of suffering derived from realization of one’s own inadequacies and misery.

  “It designates a feeling as infinite as an open accordion, a feeling that is the synthesis of many others: grief, sympathy, remorse, and an indefinable longing. The first syllable, which is long and, stressed, sounds like the wail of an abandoned dog…

  …One of the standard remedies for personal misery is love. The recipient of an absolute love cannot be miserable. All his faults are redeemed by love’s magic eyes, which make even uncoordinated thrashing and a head jerking back and forth above the water look charming.”

  - Milan Kundera