ABOUT THE BLOG

“... and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?” - Charles Bukowski

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For years, growing up, I had eluded the icy grip of loneliness. I always had a few close friends and a buzzing social circle. However, in 2018, when I switched schools, I found all my acquaintances fall away like leaves in autumn. Forced to plunge into solitude, I could only ask myself why.

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   "If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

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In my experience, solitude only reflects everything back at you. It is like being locked in a dark room: every breath you whisper is echoed back at you. In solitude, a person can understand aspects of themselves they otherwise would be ignorant of. Descartes's demon and Jung's encounter with the shadow are ideas which I had found interesting when faced with being alone.

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Loneliness on the other hand, is like being lost in a desert and seeing a caravan crossing the distance, and you run towards it, stumbling through the hot sand dunes, but you never reach it. For me, the only thing that had lessened the sun's relentless heat is finding manuscripts left behind in the sand. Novels like the Bell Jar and Norwegian Wood, showed me that there are other people who have journeyed through the desert.

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It is on this basis that I had started the Ink Vine. In part, to rationally contemplate human behavior, and in part, to leave it behind as a manuscript in the sand for anyone lost in the desert. The blog itself, a flourishing vine, as all the ideas and emotions relate to one another.