damakaia

there’s a delicate balance between kindness and pity, a tightrope strung between intent and ego. the circus of pity is a strange one. you enter under heavy velvet curtains, the air thick with dust and old light. the lights are bright, but artificial. the scent is part candlewax, part rot. pity makes a performance of pain. it takes suffering and presses it into spectacle. when you read stefan zweig’s beware of pity , you become part of the audience. complicit, applauding. edith stands at the center, her pain displayed, catalogued, recited. hofmiller moves around her like a master of ceremonies, convinced he’s delivering grace, convinced his pity is a stand-in for love. but pity, zweig reminds us, is not salvation. it’s a form of distance. distance that is sharper, more devastating than cruelty. it wraps itself in kindness, but it isolates. it entraps. edith becomes an exhibit in this theater of empathy. her vulnerability distorted, staged. hofmiller’s pity does not bridge the gap betwee...

mornings are the worst. i learned that early. not in any grand, dramatic sense, but in the quiet repetition of waking before i’m ready, lying still, holding my breath like the day might mistake me for something inanimate and pass me over. it never does. the sun always finds its way through the blinds. thin white lines across the wall, across my skin. gentle. indifferent. i get up eventually. i always do. the mirror greets me with the same face. it looks enough like me to pass. i study the eyes first. they’re brown. sometimes they’re tired. sometimes they’re just eyes. the hair falls the way it always has, stubborn in its own familiar pattern. i take stock. everything’s there. and still, it doesn’t add up. there’s something off — a filter misapplied, a rendering error no one else seems to see. people tell me i’m pretty. they say it like it should answer something. as if beauty were meant to compensate for disconnection. you feel invisible? that’s strange — you’re cute. i hear that ...