Reflective Essays and Poetic Musings by Condemiang + Stories About the World

This gentleman was the one who got me interested in sexuality from an early age.  Back in 9th grade, I was constantly holed up in the school library, utterly absorbed in his brilliant case studies on psychotherapeutic treatments using association techniques. A truly great man. He argued that most psychological problems stem from sexual issues.  And honestly, given the atmosphere of Victorian Europe where women were forced into extreme modesty, it seems quite reasonable—almost historically empirical—to suppose that such issues arose from women’s repressed sexual freedom. Or at least, that’s the kind of conclusion I think I might be inclined to possibly agree with. Maybe. But the "woman problem" isn’t just a women’s issue.  Problems of a particular class don’t stay confined to that class.  Society is an organism—when one part breaks down, the effects ripple across the whole.  Ignore it like it’s none of your business, and you’ll end up with a metaphorical smack in...

Born in Prague, in the Kingdom of Bohemia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was mainly active in Germany and died in Switzerland. His full name was “René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke.” It sounds like one of those absurdly long, tongue-twisting names no one could possibly remember. With a name this long, there can’t possibly be another person on Earth with the same one. When his older sister Maria died at an early age, his mother, yearning for her daughter, shoved ‘Maria’ into Rilke’s name even though he was a boy. He fell head over heels for Lou Salomé, a Russian-born writer and psychoanalyst who was fourteen years older than him, and followed her around like a little duckling. Most likely a case of maternal love deficiency. Even when Lou Salomé entered a marriage that was marriage in name only, he went so far as to visit her home and begged to live with her—a pure-hearted romantic? A stalker? Mentally unstable? It’s said that Salomé was the one who told h...

  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched these performances by now. To be honest, I was never someone deeply immersed in classical music—not in the past, and not even now. But ever since I encountered this pianist’s performance, something in me began to shift. Even when the pieces weren’t immediately moving or familiar to me, I found myself overcome with emotion, shedding tears more than once while listening to music I once thought inaccessible. And I know—this emotion I feel is, in part, shaped by the visual stimulation of the videos, by the contagious admiration expressed by others, and even by my own self-image, swept up in that shared appreciation. Yet despite all that, his playing—so natural and expressive, so clearly flawless even to someone like me—is undeniably extraordinary. The power and passion, the response from the orchestra and the audience… it’s impossible not to recognize the greatness of these performances. Many of the works he plays are among the most icon...

Life may appear to be an endless succession of events, but in truth, it is a garment woven from people. The true substance of our lives lies not in the events themselves, but in the people within them.   Each person is a strand of yarn, and it is through the knitting of relationships that these strands are bound together. Life, then, is a garment crafted from countless human threads. While I may choose which garment to wear, its texture and color depend entirely on the people who comprise it. We often believe our present selves are the result of our own thoughts and choices. But that is merely the outcome of our selections—not the whole of who we are. The more friction and abrasion there is, the more the fabric wears thin, and sometimes, it tears altogether. Yet this garment shields what we wish to conceal, and it protects us from the cold and harsh winds of the world.  One who possesses many garments well-suited to the seasons of life is truly someone who has lived fully. K...

My Favourite Friends Software Light is both illumination and the very source of distortion and blindness to us. Don’t ask me why—please. Explaining it is so complicated that I’d end up foaming at the mouth and spitting as I talk. But if you really insist, we’d better do it over a drink—at least the spit from an alcohol-disinfected mouth would be somewhat safer. It was through Rainer Maria Rilke that I first discovered metaphor—those quiet bridges between the visible and the invisible. From that moment, I stepped gently but irrevocably into the realms of literature, history, and philosophy. I chose the sciences, yes, and spent the next 38 years shouldering the consequences of that decision. But I never wonder if the other path would have been better. I believe the person I’ve become is the best possible result of the road I walked. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Most of what I longed for came to me. And the things I didn’t attain? Perhaps they were never what I truly desired in the ...