Only Dostoyevsky knows me...

You walk to the back isle labeled Philosophy, pull White Nights off the shelf, slide your back down the shelves sprawling your legs out as you sit to read, “It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me. . .For though I have been living almost eight years in Petersburg I had hardly an acquaintance. . .I felt afraid of being left alone, and for three whole days I wandered about the town in profound dejection, not knowing what to do with myself. . .They of course do not know me, but I know them. I know them intimately; I have almost made a study of their faces. . .For two evenings I was puzzling my brains to think what amiss in my corner; why I feel so uncomfortable in it. . .” A woman searching for a book beside you steps in-between your legs, Excuse me, I’m just searching for Camus’s The Stranger.

You know when you read something, and it feels as though the words you are reading came from your own thoughts? That happens a lot when you read philosophy, thoughts you thought no one else thought are captured in literature or philosophical novels waiting for you to see you in them.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, Wait a Meta, Existential Dialogues

Photo from film: A Woman is a Woman (1961)

Dostoevsky, White Nights (1848)

#philosophy #existential #existentialcrisis #nooneunderstandsme

#suffering #deepthinker #lifeishard #literature

#makemeaning #existentialist #loneliness #createyourlife

#existentialism #dostoevsky

Incandescent

Smoldering from the depths of me,

Smoke rises.

Out my vented chest

Butterflies flutter--

Your iris painted

the color of my minds sea.

Labradorite cinereal.

My silvered lantern.

fissured branches,

glowing ember.

Effervescent beauty seeps through me.

Chromatic metamorphosis.

Like moonlight you cast a beam,

On all the places that must

be seen.

Sepia budded vines entangled,

Growing.

I'm already something new.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, Wait a Meta, Existential Dialogues

Do you sometimes feel that this global pandemic will never end?

We seem to have hit another place collectively. Many of us in disbelief that this is still happening. We have become concerned as to how long this will continue. All the social distancing, travel, and large crowd restrictions, and having to wear masks in all indoor places. Parents concerned to send their children to school. Kids worried about going to school whether its due to social anxiety or their own fear of covid and not having the vaccine just yet. Polarized views on the safety of the vaccine are causing major divides within friends and familial systems.

We still must make space for hope. Hope that one day it will not be this way. That we will have overcome this. After all, we will never have this moment back.

Savor this present experience as it is.

What a beautiful moment here in the chaos of this which we call life.

Take it all in. For all its uncertainty. All that is present in the here and now.

In this historical time to be alive.

Look at where we are.

Sit with what you are grateful for.

Cherish your travels. Every path you take in life.

Whatever direction this pandemic has taken you we all grieve the absence of what we collectively experienced. Before covid existed.

We must remember that all things that we experience in life contribute to how we interpret the world. This pandemic has given us all something to create from. Even in such grave tragedy beauty blooms brightly in the darkest corners. What feels like the end of the world becomes a gift to learn from.

During the pandemic life has continued to prevail, people have gotten married, divorced, met their partners, moved to a new place, started a new job, had a baby, started a business, started therapy, wrote books, created art, reimagined what life could look like in the future suspending how we always knew it to be.

Have compassion for how you are experiencing this situation.

Have compassion for the you that has been experiencing this situation the entire time.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues

Moon Clock

Moon Clock

In full vulnerability

Illuminating bright

Luminescence.

You see yourself glimmer

In the gaze of the Other.

Temporal rotation.

Within a shadow

We meet ourselves.

Where are we?

With myself how do I see myself?

In thought? On the page? In a recording?

In my reflections of my recent experiences.

I see myself in you. I see you in myself.

Part of each other’s present evolution.

You no longer are where you were.

One section of chapters becoming the palate to paint the next section.

Opening my evolution from the page I am on today.

Moon Clock

Time to illuminate the world to reveal who we are to ourselves.

Without the world who would we be?

How could we see who we are without all that exists beyond us?

We would be nothing without the world.

© Victoria Venturella, MA, The Existentialist, Existential Dialogues