Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c347IR // #c347Synthesis

Paradoxically, I felt both a nostalgie for the book I should have written, and now never would, and a fear that the guest, the specter, would never abandon me.

— In our words · Source: Collected Fictions (Jorge Luis Borges)

[Use when]

Use when abandoning a project leaves both grief and haunting.

[Why it matters]

Abandoned work leaves compound interest: grief for what was not written plus haunting by what was started.

More from Collected Fictions

#c343These (and other) parallels between the story of Julius Caesar and the story of an Irish conspirator induce Ryan to imagine some secret…Use when two distant stories rhyme hard enough to imply a pattern, not coincidence. #c344From learning to pity the misfortunes of the heroes of our novels, we wind up feeling too much pity for our own.Use when reading empathy becomes self-pity by transfer. #c345In life, Ashe was afflicted with unreality, as so many Englishmen are; in death, he is not even the ghost he was in life.Use when an English understatement of self needs a colder afterlife version.