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I’ve been thinking about cities.

Freud:

let us, by a flight of imagination, suppose that Rome is not a human habitation but a psychical entity with a similarly long and copious past–an entity, that is to say, in which nothing that has once come into existence will have passed away and all the earlier phases of development continue to exist alongside the latest one. This would mean that in Rome the palaces of the Caesars and the Septizonium of Septimius Severus would still be rising to their old height on the Palatine and that the castle of S. Angelo would still be carrying on its battlements the beautiful statues which graced it until the siege by the Goths, and so on. But more than this. In the place occupied by the Palazzo Caffarelli would once more stand-without the Palazzo having to be removed–the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus; and this not only in its latest shape, as the Romans of the Empire saw it, but also in its earliest one, when it still showed Etruscan forms and was ornamented with terracotta antefixes. Where the Coliseum now stands we could at the same time admire Nero’s vanished Golden House. On the Piazza of the Pantheon we should find not only the Pantheon of to-day, as it was bequeathed to us by Hadrian, but, on the same site, the original edifice erected by Agrippa; indeed, the same piece of ground would be supporting the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the ancient temple over which it was built. And the observer would perhaps only have to change the direction of his glance or his position in order to call up the one view or the other. (Civilization and Its Discontents p16)

Perhaps comparing this with the entrance to the Inferno would reveal something? Or perhaps not.

At the end of his play, No Exit, Sartre declares (vicariously) that, “Hell is other people.”

My familiarity with hell is entirely Dante-derived. And Dante (who, if you’ll recall was there and would know) portrays hell as a lonely, or at least self-absorbed, experience.

I’m not sure what to do with this. Perhaps I should off to bed.

So: depressing topic for the day

I was reading today about the columbine massacre (I warned you), and the struggle to identify some sort of motive. And as the author listed off the ususal suspects (video games, partents, trench coats Marylin Manson), I got to thinking.

Now what if this is the scenario: you spend your whole life hearing about how powerless your generation is. You’re apathetic. Your music, opinions and fellings are cliche. Rebellion? Its been done. In every form. So really, what is there left to do?

Something huge. Something awful.

How awful.

Up, perioscope!