Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.
-
It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.
-
-- Anne Lamott
-
Pathological connoisseurshipness
Excerpts, Jeanette Winterson:
-
Is the danger of beauty so great that it is better to live without it? Or to fall into her arms fire to fire? There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.
-
But how else to live, vertical that I am, pressed down and pressing up simultaneously? I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other. The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love.
-
To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because 'it' is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?
-
Thanksgiving: Life "as just" a series of choices
Her father lies in the ICU, his brain tumor asking the fat lady to sing. Her brother hitches a ride to the hospital as soon as he gets the news and is struck by a motorist--hit and run--on a dark, rain-soaked back road. Both father and son die within feet and an hour of each other. She is devastated.
-
An astute clinician detects a blood clot in his middle finger. He goes to the hospital for evaluation and treatment and is mistakenly given too much blood thinner. He goes into a four month coma. Fast forward past weeks, months, of intensive care to the day of discharge: the car in which he is a passenger is involved in a serious accident. An ambulance arrives and carries him back to the hospital. Moments later this same ambulance crashes into another vehicle. Multiple surgeries are necessary and his wife files for divorce. He is in physical, financial and emotional ruin.
-
She comes through back surgery with flying colors and has a year of solid pain relief. When discomfort slowly returns she seeks help and agrees to have the inserted hardware removed: it is impinging on a nerve. The morning she is to have the procedure her family stops for breakfast. She is happy to be temporarily distracted from a wall of mounting anxiety. Shortly after being seated she looks up and sees a man walking towards her wielding a large metal pipe. Without time to react she is lifted, grabbed around the neck and used as a human shield as the man threatens to kill the restaurant manager. The police arrive and she is thrown down on a nearby table with the stronghold's release. She is bent over, crumpled and in agony. Her surgery is delayed. Trauma flashbacks and increased spinal incapacitation haunt her daily.
-
"Life is just a series of choices. Nothing happens to you, you choose."
Excerpts, The Answer Man:
Question: If God made everything, then why are some things bad, like, for example, the whole pain and suffering thing?
Answer: Opposites. Without things that suck you would have no idea what good was and, therefore, be directionless. You smell shit and walk the other way.
Question: Do I have a destiny or is it all free will? Destiny or free will?
Answer: Free will moving toward or away from a purpose.
Question: How can I love someone who is selfish and scares me?
Answer: Um, that's hard. I guess what's getting in the way are your expectations. If he would do "x", then you'd be happy. It doesn't work that way. I think you have to let go of that and maybe what you want will happen and maybe it won't. Either way, you're better off.
-
Question: If God made everything, then why are some things bad, like, for example, the whole pain and suffering thing?
Answer: Opposites. Without things that suck you would have no idea what good was and, therefore, be directionless. You smell shit and walk the other way.
Question: Do I have a destiny or is it all free will? Destiny or free will?
Answer: Free will moving toward or away from a purpose.
Question: How can I love someone who is selfish and scares me?
Answer: Um, that's hard. I guess what's getting in the way are your expectations. If he would do "x", then you'd be happy. It doesn't work that way. I think you have to let go of that and maybe what you want will happen and maybe it won't. Either way, you're better off.
-
Tuesday
How could a vision ever be given to someone to harbor if that person could not be trusted to carry it out. The message is simple: commitment precedes vision.
-- High Eagle
-- High Eagle
Wednesday
A marriage is risky business these days
Says some old and prudent voice inside.
We don't need twenty children anymore
To keep the family line alive,
Or gather up the hay before the rain.
No law demands respectability.
Love can arrive without certificate or cash.
History and experience both make clear
That men and women do not hear
The music of the world in the same key,
Rather rolling dissonances doomed to clash.
-
So what is left to justify a marriage?
Maybe only the hunch that half the world
Will ever be present in any room
With just a single pair of eyes to see it.
Whatever is invisible to one
Is to the other an enormous golden lion
Calm and sleeping in the easy chair.
After many years, if things go right
Both lion and emptiness are always there;
The one never true without the other.
-
But the dark secret of the ones long married,
A pleasure never mentioned to the young,
Is the sweet heat made from two bodies in a bed
Curled together on a winter night,
The smell of the other always in the quilt,
The hand set quietly on the other's flank
That carries news from another world
Light-years away from the one inside
That you always thought you inhabited alone.
The heat in that hand could melt a stone.
-
Bill Holm, Wedding Poem For Schele and Phil
-
Monday
Suddenly, I stopped thinking about Love,
after so many years of only that,
after thinking that nothing else mattered.
And what was I thinking of when I stopped
thinking about Love? Death, of course—what else
could take Love’s place? What else could hold such force?
-- Joyce Sutphen, excerpt, At The Moment
after so many years of only that,
after thinking that nothing else mattered.
And what was I thinking of when I stopped
thinking about Love? Death, of course—what else
could take Love’s place? What else could hold such force?
-- Joyce Sutphen, excerpt, At The Moment
Thursday
"I cured with the power that came through me. Of course, it was not I who cured, it was the power from the Outer World, the visions and the ceremonies had only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds."
"If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish."
-- Black Elk
Monday: Diane Williams
-
He had chafing and I'm not having luck with anything I'm using. We agreed to meet where they know me. The server put drinks down.
-
"Hey!" he said. "I happen to have a chicken. Why don't you come over?"
-
I would say that to a friend, and it would be true!
-
My anus is now irritated. My vagina's very delicate. My stomach hurts.
-
His sconces were shaded in a red tartan plaid and there were sideviews of sailing boats in frames.
-
I was getting to see the hair cracks in his skin that suggest stone or concrete as it hardens.
-
Back out on 91st Street, a man and a woman were walking their dog. The woman had turnip-colored hair. The man wore a felt hat and he motioned to me. They could have both been exhausted and penniless. No! As it turned out they were assembled there to talk me out of that. Let me think about this further. At a stand, I bought a few strands of daisies. Every bone in one of these blossoms is mended.
-
"Nothing weighty from me without a near shriek."
David Ignatow, Journal Excerpt IV
-
My mind goes blank and waits for me to relax and allow it to wander freely wherever it wishes to go. All sorts of images are flashing there now. I see downtown eastside, Ave C near 14th street, with its shabby stores packed close together, wall against wall for blocks on end. I see the Bus make its turn on 14th street into Avenue C, filled with passengers in ill fitting clothes. The elderly women wear shawls on their heads, the elderly men wear suits too large for them, the sleeves run down below their fingertips, the cuffs are frayed, the cuffs to the pants drag along the floor. These are castoff clothes that they have received from the Welfare Department, but that is not the real point. These people are as worn as their clothes, as resigned looking, waiting for the inevitable death. Perhaps on the bus. After years of living in cold flats and eating out of tin plates scraps of meat the butcher was kind enough to throw into their shopping bag as a gift to the poor. But even that is not the real point. They have no spirit, they sit and let the bus take them, they are not in a hurry, they are not anxious to get to where they are going, they do not look forward to their stop, they are not drumming their fingers on the window sill impatiently, happy or angry, no matter which. Their faces are just faces of patience and endurance. They were not kind persons in their younger days, not anymore than the better off in the cleaner parts of the city. They too who had children beat and scolded them or sent them arbitrarily out of the house never to return again, because of some imagined wrong or insult to pride, the children rebellious and unkind themselves to their parents who then turned on each other in anger and despair and fought with fists and tongues and were divorced or in the same house never again slept together in the same bed. They too were impossible, to one another and to themselves even without the pride of wealth or position which was lacking them. No matter, anger was at the heart of it in either case, and now it's no worse being taken by bus to where they must go than to be driven there by Cadillac where in the latest fashions they would hear out the suicide or insanity of children or friends. A common heritage.
-
Wednesday
On a hot summer afternoon, as he gazed upon the hillside from his hermitage window at the monastery, (Thomas Merton) noted how the warm breezes bent the flowers, and how the sunset made the color of the hills look bluish-purple. He wrote that it was so hot that day a bull was lying down under a tree, just waiting for the sun to set. But as he jotted down the small and precious details, he ended by writing, "This day will never come again." That one line went straight through my heart and into my soul...
That night, as I looked across the dinner table at my friends, I melted them into my memory, thinking, "I will never again be here with you in just this way. This evening of our lives will never come again." My love for them exploded in that instant as I realized it could well be the last time I would ever see them, for who knows when we shall be called to leave this life?
-
Each day never comes again for me now, and each minute sometimes. I look at strangers and think, "I will never see that face again," and wonder why I am seeing that face at all. And suddenly the face of that stranger is beautiful to me.
-
photos: 1905 Gorham sterling holloware, engagement present to my maternal grandparents, 1923
-
Sunday
Tommy (Steve Buscemi): "I'll bet it was hard for him, Matt, because, you know, he felt like he was a failure to you."
-
Matthew (Kevin Corrigan): "But he made me feel like a failure, not even a failure, like I was nothing."
-
Tommy: "Ah, but you know why? Because he felt bad about the kind of father he was so he had to make you feel bad and that probably made him feel even worse."
-
Matthew: "That's why he hated me."
-
Tommy: "C'mon, he didn't hate you. How could he hate you? I mean, who knows, maybe he thought you hated him."
-
Matthew: "You think so?"
-
Tommy: "No, hey, c'mon, don't listen to me. I'm just...
Hey, deep down he knew how you felt, just like you knew how he felt about you but along the way things got fucked up. But so what, everybody's fucked up, you know, but nobody wants anybody else to think they are but everybody knows they are anyway.
The thing I'm trying to say, Matthew, is that I think, in his own way, your father loved you. It's that simple."
-
excerpt, Trees Lounge
-
-
Matthew (Kevin Corrigan): "But he made me feel like a failure, not even a failure, like I was nothing."
-
Tommy: "Ah, but you know why? Because he felt bad about the kind of father he was so he had to make you feel bad and that probably made him feel even worse."
-
Matthew: "That's why he hated me."
-
Tommy: "C'mon, he didn't hate you. How could he hate you? I mean, who knows, maybe he thought you hated him."
-
Matthew: "You think so?"
-
Tommy: "No, hey, c'mon, don't listen to me. I'm just...
Hey, deep down he knew how you felt, just like you knew how he felt about you but along the way things got fucked up. But so what, everybody's fucked up, you know, but nobody wants anybody else to think they are but everybody knows they are anyway.
The thing I'm trying to say, Matthew, is that I think, in his own way, your father loved you. It's that simple."
-
excerpt, Trees Lounge
-
My youngest brother has found home: Elizabeth and Andrew are engaged
How Love Came To Us
-
-
Gradually, and working its way slowly, through all things,
beginning even long before we knew each other.
Through emptiness, through aimlessness,
the spirit’s daily wandering in the desert of the familiar,
fed by nights of exhaustion and driven by occasional despair,
by grief, loss compounded upon loss.
Through the patient forbearance of cruelties,
year after year, through folly, through faith and faithlessness,
through half-measures and weakness, through your and my
daily silent supplications and small acts of ordinary magic,
the spontaneous calling out to distant spirits,
each in our separate ways, and for answer the surge of the wind,
the circulation of the sun and the moon,
the churning of the far away oceans
that we each knew and felt in our own blood and breath.
So that when we first saw each other
finally that one July evening at twilight,
it seemed almost as if nothing happened.
A life had already grown up wild around us like a meadow,
was already waiting for us, silent, open.
Gradually, and working its way slowly, through all things,
beginning even long before we knew each other.
Through emptiness, through aimlessness,
the spirit’s daily wandering in the desert of the familiar,
fed by nights of exhaustion and driven by occasional despair,
by grief, loss compounded upon loss.
Through the patient forbearance of cruelties,
year after year, through folly, through faith and faithlessness,
through half-measures and weakness, through your and my
daily silent supplications and small acts of ordinary magic,
the spontaneous calling out to distant spirits,
each in our separate ways, and for answer the surge of the wind,
the circulation of the sun and the moon,
the churning of the far away oceans
that we each knew and felt in our own blood and breath.
So that when we first saw each other
finally that one July evening at twilight,
it seemed almost as if nothing happened.
A life had already grown up wild around us like a meadow,
was already waiting for us, silent, open.
-
Part II: "Fuck it, let's party"
Easy Cocktails from the Cursing Mommy
-
Ian Frazier
-
Those high-priced bartenders in their red vests and white shirts who your caterers recommended to serve at your last party may know a thing or two, but for entertaining on a smaller scale—for parties of seven people, four, or even just one—a few simple steps to the perfect cocktail are all you’ll ever need. Take, for example, this drink I’m drinking right now. Where the hell did I put it? I just set it down five minutes ago. I had it when I was watching the news, I know that. Now what in hell could I have done with it? O.K.—I found it, thank heavens. I must have set it here on the stairs when I went to throw away the mail. Anyway, as I was saying, making this particular drink, which happens to be a vodka gimlet, is simplicity itself, once you know how.
-
Plus, it’s so delicious! The tangy tartness of the lime juice combined with the antiseptic astringency of the icy-cold vodka—wonderful. Now, normally in this column the Cursing Mommy does not endorse any company, product, or institution, but just this once I’m going to make an exception, because, what the hell—I use Rose’s Lime Juice. It’s perfect for gimlets, so I always keep a few extra bottles in reserve in case I run out, as in fact I did just a few minutes ago when I mixed the drink I’m finishing now. The backup bottles, which are down here on the bottom shelf of the liquor cabinet—don’t tell me they’re not here. Please don’t fucking tell me the Rose’s Lime Juice is not fucking here.
-
If Larry took my last spare bottle to use in his fucking Sno-Kone machine, by Christ, I swear I’ll—oh, thank God. Here it is, back behind the Kahlúa and the walnut liqueur. Whew. That was a close one.
-
Anyway, you take your Rose’s Lime Juice, you take your favorite gimlet glass (which, for me, is the one I was just using), and—fuck. I have lost my drink again. Somebody please tell me I have not lost my stupid goddam fucking drink again! O.K., it has to be close by, because I had it right before I was hunting around on all fours in front of the liquor cabinet. Wait a minute—can this be it? Here on the counter behind the flour cannister? I don’t think this is it. I’ll just take a sip and—Phewww!! Gahhh! Disgusting! This must be the drink I couldn’t find night before last. Fucking ants in it. Drowned ants. Good Christ, what was I thinking?
-
O.K., we have established that that was definitely not the glass I was looking for. In situations like this, the Cursing Mommy recommends that you take three deep breaths, concentrate inwardly on some attractive and relaxing vacation scene, and scream “Fuck!” at the top of your lungs. There—I feel better. Don’t you?
-
Usually at about this time of the evening I must begin making dinner. Larry and the kids will be home soon. Fortunately, however, tonight is Make Your Own Goddam Dinner Night, a recently instituted family ritual I shared with you in last week’s column. So basically I don’t have to worry about that. Instead, what I’m going to do is just close my eyes, wait until I regain a sense of calm, and when I open them again my missing gimlet glass is going to be right in front of me.
-
Oh, fucking hell. Could I possibly have left it down in the basement? Of course not—that’s ridiculous. I haven’t even been down in the basement, not since I vowed I wouldn’t touch another piece of laundry today even if it meant the clothes already in the washer mildewed and rotted away. Regular followers of this column know that at about this point every week the Cursing Mommy flips out due to one problem or another and begins cursing a lot, throwing things, and giving people the finger. Somehow, however, I don’t think it’s quite appropriate to go to those extremes over a problem as minor as a misplaced cocktail glass. Instead, I will begin a systematic search, accompanying myself meanwhile with a sort of general, all-around cursing out of various deserving individuals and things.
-
For starters, God damn to hell my father’s fucking girlfriend, who expects me to do all the food and the cleanup at his seventy-fifth birthday party, and then she’ll take all the credit for herself, such a fucking jerk. Fuck the township, also, for changing fucking Bulky Waste Day from Monday to Friday and now I have to haul all that shit that I carried down this morning back up from the curb or they’re going to give us a ticket, the fucking bureaucratic red-tape, petty, time-server assholes. And, just in passing, fuck the fucking Bush Administration—I know they’re not in power anymore, but fuck them anyway, because they’re such a bunch of fucks. And on the subject of stupid fucks, fuck the—
-
FUUUUUUUCK! OW! JESUS CHRIST! FUCKING SHIT! I STUBBED MY FUCKING TOE! OW OW OW! JESUS! FUCKING LARRY LEFT THAT FUCKING BOX OF ADAPTERS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DINING-ROOM FLOOR, THE FUCKING IDIOT! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT STUPID FUCKING BOX DOING THERE! I TOLD HIM TO PUT THOSE FUCKING ADAPTERS AWAY! FUCK! OW! FUCK!
-
(Pause.)
-
People say that when you misplace an object in your home, instead of tearing the place apart looking for it, you should just be patient, and the object you are looking for will eventually turn up. And now we see the accuracy of this saying, because as I sit here on the dining-room floor cursing and massaging my goddam stubbed toe, I notice that over there on the floor, just behind the door to the kitchen, is the stupid fucking cocktail glass I was looking for. And, thanks be to merciful God, there is still a fair amount of drink remaining in it, so I’ll down it now. What a fucking terrible day this has been.
-
Next week the Cursing Mommy will show you how to put up the decorations for a child’s birthday party all by yourself with no help from your fucking husband. Watch for her column, entitled, “God Damn This Tape Dispenser to Hell: Party Decorating Tips from the Cursing Mommy.”
-
-
Ian Frazier
-
Those high-priced bartenders in their red vests and white shirts who your caterers recommended to serve at your last party may know a thing or two, but for entertaining on a smaller scale—for parties of seven people, four, or even just one—a few simple steps to the perfect cocktail are all you’ll ever need. Take, for example, this drink I’m drinking right now. Where the hell did I put it? I just set it down five minutes ago. I had it when I was watching the news, I know that. Now what in hell could I have done with it? O.K.—I found it, thank heavens. I must have set it here on the stairs when I went to throw away the mail. Anyway, as I was saying, making this particular drink, which happens to be a vodka gimlet, is simplicity itself, once you know how.
-
Plus, it’s so delicious! The tangy tartness of the lime juice combined with the antiseptic astringency of the icy-cold vodka—wonderful. Now, normally in this column the Cursing Mommy does not endorse any company, product, or institution, but just this once I’m going to make an exception, because, what the hell—I use Rose’s Lime Juice. It’s perfect for gimlets, so I always keep a few extra bottles in reserve in case I run out, as in fact I did just a few minutes ago when I mixed the drink I’m finishing now. The backup bottles, which are down here on the bottom shelf of the liquor cabinet—don’t tell me they’re not here. Please don’t fucking tell me the Rose’s Lime Juice is not fucking here.
-
If Larry took my last spare bottle to use in his fucking Sno-Kone machine, by Christ, I swear I’ll—oh, thank God. Here it is, back behind the Kahlúa and the walnut liqueur. Whew. That was a close one.
-
Anyway, you take your Rose’s Lime Juice, you take your favorite gimlet glass (which, for me, is the one I was just using), and—fuck. I have lost my drink again. Somebody please tell me I have not lost my stupid goddam fucking drink again! O.K., it has to be close by, because I had it right before I was hunting around on all fours in front of the liquor cabinet. Wait a minute—can this be it? Here on the counter behind the flour cannister? I don’t think this is it. I’ll just take a sip and—Phewww!! Gahhh! Disgusting! This must be the drink I couldn’t find night before last. Fucking ants in it. Drowned ants. Good Christ, what was I thinking?
-
O.K., we have established that that was definitely not the glass I was looking for. In situations like this, the Cursing Mommy recommends that you take three deep breaths, concentrate inwardly on some attractive and relaxing vacation scene, and scream “Fuck!” at the top of your lungs. There—I feel better. Don’t you?
-
Usually at about this time of the evening I must begin making dinner. Larry and the kids will be home soon. Fortunately, however, tonight is Make Your Own Goddam Dinner Night, a recently instituted family ritual I shared with you in last week’s column. So basically I don’t have to worry about that. Instead, what I’m going to do is just close my eyes, wait until I regain a sense of calm, and when I open them again my missing gimlet glass is going to be right in front of me.
-
Oh, fucking hell. Could I possibly have left it down in the basement? Of course not—that’s ridiculous. I haven’t even been down in the basement, not since I vowed I wouldn’t touch another piece of laundry today even if it meant the clothes already in the washer mildewed and rotted away. Regular followers of this column know that at about this point every week the Cursing Mommy flips out due to one problem or another and begins cursing a lot, throwing things, and giving people the finger. Somehow, however, I don’t think it’s quite appropriate to go to those extremes over a problem as minor as a misplaced cocktail glass. Instead, I will begin a systematic search, accompanying myself meanwhile with a sort of general, all-around cursing out of various deserving individuals and things.
-
For starters, God damn to hell my father’s fucking girlfriend, who expects me to do all the food and the cleanup at his seventy-fifth birthday party, and then she’ll take all the credit for herself, such a fucking jerk. Fuck the township, also, for changing fucking Bulky Waste Day from Monday to Friday and now I have to haul all that shit that I carried down this morning back up from the curb or they’re going to give us a ticket, the fucking bureaucratic red-tape, petty, time-server assholes. And, just in passing, fuck the fucking Bush Administration—I know they’re not in power anymore, but fuck them anyway, because they’re such a bunch of fucks. And on the subject of stupid fucks, fuck the—
-
FUUUUUUUCK! OW! JESUS CHRIST! FUCKING SHIT! I STUBBED MY FUCKING TOE! OW OW OW! JESUS! FUCKING LARRY LEFT THAT FUCKING BOX OF ADAPTERS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DINING-ROOM FLOOR, THE FUCKING IDIOT! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT STUPID FUCKING BOX DOING THERE! I TOLD HIM TO PUT THOSE FUCKING ADAPTERS AWAY! FUCK! OW! FUCK!
-
(Pause.)
-
People say that when you misplace an object in your home, instead of tearing the place apart looking for it, you should just be patient, and the object you are looking for will eventually turn up. And now we see the accuracy of this saying, because as I sit here on the dining-room floor cursing and massaging my goddam stubbed toe, I notice that over there on the floor, just behind the door to the kitchen, is the stupid fucking cocktail glass I was looking for. And, thanks be to merciful God, there is still a fair amount of drink remaining in it, so I’ll down it now. What a fucking terrible day this has been.
-
Next week the Cursing Mommy will show you how to put up the decorations for a child’s birthday party all by yourself with no help from your fucking husband. Watch for her column, entitled, “God Damn This Tape Dispenser to Hell: Party Decorating Tips from the Cursing Mommy.”
-
Wednesday
It unfolds something like this: Your patient comes in one day and surprises you by the ease with which she gains some powerful insight about an associative link that had been previously unavailable to either of you and apparently unconscious for her. The experience is stunning for both of you. Neither of you is sure how it happened but the whole thing flowed like a hot knife through butter. Suddenly her life looks different and she's discovered some startling new capacity to alter something that's made her unhappy. Glowing with expectation, you settle yourselves in for the next psychoanalytic session. You're both determined to replicate what happened last time.
-
But that's not how it works. She tries, you try. You can't get beyond the trying. She leaves and you're both disappointed. Next time she comes in, you don't have much in the way of expectations. You're not sure what's likely to happen. You've done your best to think about both sessions, but you've also recognized, probably for the millionth time if you've been in practice long, you're not in control of the ship. You recall what Freud said about letting your attention float free so that you can gain mental access to the unexpected, the unconscious. You stop trying to duplicate that wonderful session and you help your patient do the same. You both let go.
-
And that gets you back on track. The work stumbles along--sometimes remarkable, sometimes unremarkable--and your meetings approach a baseline pace that heads in a positive direction. You're perpetually reminded that trying hard doesn't get you there, and that you both get there best when you somehow manage a state of trying and not trying, knowing and not knowing, certainty and uncertainty all at once. Every time you think you've hit on a less paradoxical formula, you're humbled again.
-
excerpt, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Ph.D., Extraordinary Knowing
-
Thursday
Certainty is a lens to interpret what's going on and, as long as our explanations work, we feel a sense of stability and security. But in a changing world, certainty doesn't give us stability; it actually creates more chaos. As we stay locked in our position and refuse to adapt and change, the things we hoped would stay together fall apart. It's a traditional paradox expressed in many spiritual traditions: By holding on, we destroy what we hope to preserve; by letting go, we feel secure in accepting what is.
-
Margaret Wheatley, Disturb Me, Please
-
For a friend
"It's a comfort for seekers to know that no matter how much strange water they venture there are always pilots within call but, yet, the sufferer must help themselves. That's Kierkegaard, you know." -
Dr. Robert Carter (Robert Loggia), Shrink
-
Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
-
And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
-
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.
-
Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore
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Sunday: General Relativity
"You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper. It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel."
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Haruki Murakami, After Dark
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"It's all bullshit, then you die."
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Dr. Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey), Shrink
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lassieandtimmy@gmail dot com
