On Trying to Teach Brian Doyle’s “Leap” to the Post-9/11 Generation Steve Edwards Wonders If It’s Possible to Translate One Generation’s Trauma to the Next By Steve Edwards July 14, 2023
Jaffrey
has admirably, to [Meera] Sodha’s mind, made a career of sliding freely between
artistic practices. “She is one of life’s true creatives,” Sodha said.
“She moved from film to food and taught me that if you follow your
passion and put the work in you can, if you wish, get out of your swim
lane.”
“The thinking mind is what is busy. You have to stay in
your heart. You have to be in your heart. Be in your heart. The rest is
up here in your head where you are doing, doing, doing.”
“We’re all just walking each other home.”
“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
“My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too.”
“From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need
to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it’s
got you.” link
“It is important to expect nothing, to take every
experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path,
and to proceed.”
“Pain is the mind. It’s the thoughts of the mind. Then I
get rid of the thoughts, and I get in my witness, which is down in my
spiritual heart. The witness that witnesses being. Then those particular
thoughts that are painful – love them. I love them to death!”
“As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more
compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between
religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down
the separateness.”
Most writers think up a plot with an intriguing situation and then proceed to fit characters into it. With me a plot, if you could call it that, is an organic thing. It grows and often it overgrows. I am continually finding myself with scenes that I won’t discard and that don’t want to fit in. So that my plot problem invariably ends up as a desperate attempt to justify a lot of material that, for me at least, has come alive and insists on staying alive. It’s probably a silly way to write, but I seem to know no other way. The mere idea of being committed in advance to a certain pattern appalls me.
“Men
are taught over and over when they are boys that a wound that hurts is
shameful. A wound that stops you from continuing to play is a girlish
wound. He who is truly a man keeps walking, dragging his guts behind. Our story gives a teaching diametrically opposite. It says that
where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be. Wherever the
wound appears in our psyches, whether from alcoholic father, shaming
mother, shaming father, abusing mother, whether it stems from isolation,
disability, or disease, that is precisely the place for which we will
give our major gift to the community.”
―
Robert Bly,
Iron John: A Book about Men
If you got a chance to spend time with family this week and it energized you and made you feel safe, I’m so glad. Cling to that.
If you spent time with family this week and it drained and isolated you, remember there ARE people who will love you for you. Reject anything else.
When you’re in the pits of self-loathing, you don’t need to uproot your
entire being. You just need discipline. The good news? Any discipline
will do.
Forgoing modern appliances may seem extreme, but it’s key. It forces you
to take pause, and this magical space of thoughtless productivity is
where consistency builds. The rush of tap water transforming plate after
plate, glass after glass, became meditative, an outlet for my nervous
and anxious energy.
As chef Gabrielle Hamilton recounts in her memoir, “Blood, Bones & Butter,”
“What I have loved about cooking my entire life, especially prep
cooking, is the way it keeps your hands occupied but your mind free to
sort everything out.”
After
it became meditative, it became romantic. Now I watch the soapsuds eat
away at each grease-riddled dish, stained coffee mug, silver spoon and
scratched Tupperware. The faucet stream cathartically rinses away their
muck, and even my “Good morning, a--hole” coffee mug, shiny with water
droplets, gleams with gratification.
We
love what we take care of, and we take care of what we love. Instead of
groaning at the task of treating my cast iron skillet, I now treat it
as a fulfilling act of service; I know that my time seasoning it with
salt and oil will affect its life span and the palate of future
generations. I scrub away at the hand-me-down dinnerware from my
father-in-law, and I’m connected to him. In an unexpected way, pride has
seeped into my kitchen work. Cleanliness is a matter of principle. (link)
Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story.
I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don’t listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all — which is so important too — to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.
This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it. It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good.
Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people that you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself.
When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re- created. Now there are brilliant people who cannot listen much. They have no ingoing wires on their apparatus. They are entertaining, but exhausting, too. I think it is because these lecturers, these brilliant performers, by not giving us a chance to talk, do not let us express our thoughts and expand; and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts, and unexpected laughter and wisdom. That is why, when someone has listened to you, you go home rested and lighthearted.
Now this little creative fountain is in us all. It is the spirit, or the intelligence, or the imagination — whatever you want to call it. If you are very tired, strained, have no solitude, run too many errands, talk to too many people, drink too many cocktails, this little fountain is muddied over and covered with a lot of debris. The result is you stop living from the center, the creative fountain, and you live from the periphery, from externals. That is, you go along on mere willpower without imagination.
It is when people really listen to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way. I discovered all this about three years ago, and truly it made a revolutionary change in my life. Before that, when I went to a party I would think anxiously, “Now try hard. Be lively. Say bright things. Talk. Don’t let down.” And when tired, I would have to drink a lot of coffee to keep this up.
Now before going to a party I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk; to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject. No. My attitude is, “Tell me more. This person is showing me his soul. It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk. He will show his true self. Then he will be wonderfully alive.”
Sometimes, of course, I cannot listen as well as others. But when I have this listening power, people crowd around and their heads keep turning to me as though irresistibly pulled. It is not because people are conceited and want to show off that they are drawn to me, the listener. It is because by listening I have started up their creative fountain. I do them good.
Now why does it do them good? I have a kind of mystical notion about this. I think it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. It is so in writing. You are taught in school to put down on paper only the bright things. Wrong. Pour out the dull things on paper too — you can tear them up afterward — for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively. So it is with people who have not been listened to in the right way — with affection and a kind of jolly excitement. Their creative fountain has been blocked. Only superficial talk comes out — what is prissy or gushing or merely nervous. No one has called out of them, by wonderful listening, what is true and alive.
I think women have this listening faculty more than men. It is not the fault of men. They lose it because of their long habit of striving in business, of self- assertion. And the more forceful men are, the less they can listen as they grow older. And that is why women in general are more fun than men, more restful and inspiring.
Now this non-listening of able men is the cause of one of the saddest things in the world — the loneliness of fathers, of those quietly sad men who move among their grown children like remote ghosts. When my father was over 70, he was a fiery, humorous, admirable man, a scholar, a man of great force. But he was deep in the loneliness of old age and another generation. He was so fond of me. But he could not hear me — not one word I said, really. I was just audience. I would walk around the lake with him on a beautiful afternoon and he would talk to me about Darwin and Huxley and Higher Criticism of the Bible.
“Yes, I see, I see,” I kept saying and tried to keep my mind pinned to it, but I was restive and bored. There was a feeling of helplessness because he could not hear what I had to say about it. When I spoke I found myself shouting, as one does to a foreigner, and in a kind of despair that he could not hear me. After the walk I would feel that I had worked off my duty and I was anxious to get him settled and reading in his Morris chair, so that I could go out and have a livelier time with other people. And he would sigh and look after me absentmindedly with perplexed loneliness.
For years afterward, I have thought with real suffering about my father’s loneliness. Such a wonderful man, and reaching out to me and wanting to know me! But he could not. He could not listen. But now I think that if only I had known as much about listening then as I do now, I could have bridged that chasm between us. To give an example:
Recently, a man I had not seen for 20 years wrote me: “I have a family of mature children. So did your father. They never saw him. Not in the days he was alive. Not in the days he was the deep and admirable man we now both know he was. That is man’s life. When next you see me, you’ll just know everything. Just your father all over again, trying to reach through, back to the world of those he loves.”
Well, when I saw this man again, what had happened to him after 20 years? He was an unusually forceful man and had made a great deal of money. But he had lost his ability to listen. He talked rapidly and told wonderful stories and it was just fascinating to hear them. But when I spoke — restlessness, “Just hand me that, will you?... Where is my pipe?” It was just a habit. He read countless books and he was eager to take in ideas, but he just could not listen to people.
Well this is what I did. I was more patient — I did not resist his non-listening talk as I did my father’s. I listened and listened to him, not once pressing against him, even in thought, with my own self-assertion. I said to myself, “He has been under a driving pressure for years. His family has grown to resist his talk. But now, by listening, I will pull it all out of him. He must talk freely and on and on. When he has been really listened to enough, he will grow tranquil. He will begin to want to hear me.”
And he did, after a few days. He began asking me questions. And presently I was saying gently, “You see, it has become hard for you to listen.” He stopped dead and stared at me. And it was because I had listened with such complete, absorbed, uncritical sympathy, without one flaw of boredom or impatience, that he now believed and trusted me, although he did not know this.
“Now talk,” he said. “Tell me about that. Tell me all about that.” Well, we walked back and forth across the lawn and I told him my ideas about it.
“You love your children, but probably don’t let them in. Unless you listen, people are wizened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can’t know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that’s what it really is.”
Well, I don’t think I would have written this article if my notions had not had such an extraordinary effect on this man. For he says they have changed his whole life. He wrote me that his children at once came closer; he was astonished to see what they are; how original, independent, courageous. His wife seemed really to care about him again, and they were actually talking about all kinds of things and making each other laugh.
For just as the tragedy of parents and children is not listening, so it is of husbands and wives. If they disagree they begin to shout louder and louder — if not actually, at least inwardly — hanging fiercely and deafly onto their own ideas, instead of listening and becoming quieter and quieter and more comprehending. But the most serious result of not listening is that worst thing in the world, boredom; for it is really the death of love. It seals people off from each other more than any other thing. I think that is why married people quarrel. It is to cut through the non-conduction and boredom.
Because when feelings are hurt, they really begin to listen. At last their talk is a real exchange. But of course, they are injuring their marriage forever. Besides critical listening, there is another kind that is no good: passive, censorious listening. Sometimes husbands can be this kind of listener, a kind of ungenerous eavesdropper who mentally (or aloud) keeps saying as you talk, “Bunk...Bunk...Hokum.”
Now, how to listen? It is harder than you think. I don’t believe in critical listening, for that only puts a person in a straitjacket of hesitancy. He begins to choose his words solemnly or primly. His little inner fountain cannot spring. Critical listeners dry you up. But creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad- tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad- tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don’t love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.
In order to learn to listen, here are some suggestions: Try to learn tranquility, to live in the present a part of the time every day. Sometimes say to yourself, “Now. What is happening now? This friend is talking. I am quiet. There is endless time. I hear it, every word.” Then suddenly you begin to hear not only what people are saying, but what they are trying to say, and you sense the whole truth about them. And you sense existence, not piecemeal, not this object and that, but as a translucent whole.
Then watch your self-assertiveness. And give it up. Try not to drink too many cocktails to give up that nervous pressure that feels like energy and wit but may be neither. And remember it is not enough just to will to listen to people. One must really listen. Only then does the magic begin.
Sometimes people cannot listen because they think that unless they are talking, they are socially of no account. There are those women with an old- fashioned ballroom training that insists there must be unceasing vivacity and gyrations of talk. But this is really a strain on people.
Art is the daughter of time, which means basically you write for the people who can read you when you and they are alive. I’m perfectly comfortable with that. The whole notion of legacy — I think it’s kind of a media creation in a sense. We all talk about people’s legacies. I just don’t think about it. I feel like it’s a privilege to get to write books. I feel like it’s a high calling. I feel like it’s allowed me to take full advantage of myself, with the chaos that goes on in my brain. If somebody reads me now, when I publish these books and write these books, that’s all I ask. That’s really all I ask.
All
of us look for ways to find space, sometimes going to quiet places,
such as a pond with a line out, or to louder places where the drums need
only ask you once to dance. Some gotta go for a smoke, some gotta go
for a run. It’s the going that’s most important. (link)
Traditionally, Matt and I get Chinese takeout for Thanksgiving, a
holiday I actively dislike. Despite its name, Thanksgiving is really the
Family Holiday. Even Christmas pales beside it: that day's focus is on
giving and receiving even more than togetherness. Strangely though,
being alone on Christmas is to be almost hauntingly empty; you feel like
a ghost. But being alone on Thanksgiving is rather wonderful, like not
attending a party that you didn't want to go to and where no one will
realize you're not there. At Thanksgiving, you gather with your family
and stuff yourself with food as if it were love—or the next best thing
—then stagger back to your regular life, oversatiated and wrung out.
Christmas, however, creates expectations that are never met, so you
leave hungry and depressed, with an armload of things you didn't want
and can't imagine why anyone would think you did.
-John Thorne
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor
encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor
restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story
seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel
uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been
salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a
very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no
virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war
story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and
evil.
What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end...
―
Tim O'Brien,
The Things They Carried
“And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war.
It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on
a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the
mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and
memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and
people who never listen.”
No book ever gets written by thinking about it or going bowling or playing golf. You have to put your butt down and spend many, many hours in front of a computer or a piece of paper, and don’t get up, even if you’re blocked or don’t know what’s going to happen next or you don’t know what the next sentence should be. You’re like a donkey, you just keep plodding. And that quality of perseverance and stubbornness is really important.
The
summer of 2010 will be remembered for its record heat. But it has
provided a different memory for Bernard J. Fisher II, the director of
health and safety at the American Lifeguard Association.
This was the year he heard a sharp rise in complaints about lifeguards who were texting on the job.
“This
issue has really come out for us this year,” Mr. Fisher said, adding
that he had heard several dozen complaints about the practice this
summer, compared with none in 2008. “Lives are being endangered, if not
already lost, because of text messaging.”
The
threat is not hypothetical. At a public pool this summer in Duncan,
Ariz., a child panicked in the water and was rescued by an adult
visitor. Others at the pool said the lifeguard had been texting, and he
was fired, said John Basteen Jr., the town manager.
Last
summer, a 45-year-old Illinois man drowned at a beach where the guard
was texting, according to witnesses deposed in a civil suit against the
residential community where the drowning happened.
And
two years ago in Ireland, a 10-year-old boy drowned in a pool that was
guarded by a young man who had been texting. The guard admitted at a
public hearing to texting before the drowning.
The
explanations seem clear. Lifeguarding positions are commonly filled by
college students who may not want to feel disconnected from their
gadgets, even if their job is to devote full attention to watching for
signs of trouble.
Mr. Fisher of the
lifeguard association said pools and waterfront associations often could
not afford to hire well-qualified guards or to supervise guards as
closely as they might have in past years.
Organizations
have cut lifeguard wages, he said, to the point where many earn minimum
wage and pay for their own training and certification, which can cost
hundreds of dollars.
“Because
of the lack of pay, you can’t pick and choose the caliber of guard you
need,” Mr. Fisher said. “Plus, the current generation is a generation of
texting.”
Image
A
lifeguard watching the beach at Coney Island last month. The American
Lifeguard Association says text messaging by lifeguards has become a
serious concern.Credit...Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Paul
Atchley, an associate professor of psychology at the University of
Kansas who has extensively researched the technology habits of teenagers
and young adults, said such behavior was not surprising, even among
lifeguards.
“It kind of takes my
breath away, but younger people have the capacity and the expectation to
be able to communicate all the time,” he said. “When they are excluded
from texting networks, their self-esteem declines. I don’t think it’s
compulsion to multitask as much as it is a compulsion to belong.”
Even
texting in short bursts breaks standard rules for lifeguarding. They
are trained to scan their areas in 10-second cycles, because a person
can drown in as little as 20 seconds.
Many
pools and waterfronts have procedures to prevent guards from using
cellphones while on duty. Mary O’Donaghue, the aquatic specialist for
the Y.M.C.A. of Greater New York, said the organization’s roughly 200
guards cannot bring electronic devices onto the chair.
In
past years, Ms. O’Donaghue said, if guards were caught with cellphones
while on duty, they were immediately removed from duty and given another
round of training. “Sometimes they continued working with us, sometimes
not,” she said.
Starting last year,
the organization placed greater emphasis on the issue in its monthly
training sessions where lifeguards must acknowledge in writing that they
can be fired for carrying electronic devices. Since then, no guards
have been found violating the policy.
Clemente
Rivera, of Rockaway Beach, Queens, who has been a lifeguard and
waterfront supervisor in the New York City area since 1989, said that he
often sees guards using their phones. “It’s just rampant,” he said.
Mr.
Rivera said he tried an unconventional approach to solving the problem.
In 2008, as a regional pool manager for a chain of sports clubs, he saw
a lifeguard texting while people were swimming. “I was annoyed,” he
said.
The guard quickly slipped the
phone in his pocket when he spotted Mr. Rivera, who walked to the edge
of the pool. He then called the guard over, asked him to look at
something in the water and then gave the guard “a little shove.”
Mr.
Rivera’s managers asked him to explain his actions, but he was not
reprimanded, and the pool’s guards were never seen texting again.
“Even if the pool’s empty, it’s unconscionable,” Mr. Rivera said.
Yesterday I had success with the hummus. I used my juicer to squeeze four lemons, I cooked a pound of chick peas in my pressure cooker and drained the liquid and kept it separate from the chick peas. That was my error last time, I had incorporated too much of the cooking broth. I added a whole bulb of fresh garlic peeled and cored. I added tahini. I added salt and cumin and some Adobo. I used about half a cup of the chick pea liquid to moisten. All of this went into the Cuisinart at once and it became perfect hummus! Fabulous! Remember hummus can be frozen.
1. Have faith—not cynicism
2. Dare to dream
3. Take your mind off publication
4. Write for joy
5. Get the reader to turn the page
6. Forget politics (let your real politics shine through)
7. Forget intellect
8. Forget ego
9. Be a beginner
10. Accept change
11. Don't think your mind needs altering
12. Don't expect approval for telling the truth -
(Parents, politicians, colleagues, friends, etc.)
13. Use everything
14. Remember that writing is Heroism
15. Let Sex (The Body, the physical world) in!
16. Forget critics
17. Tell your truth not the world's
18. Remember to be earth-bound
19. Remember to be wild!
20. Write for the child (in yourself and others)
My psychic boat takes on water every November. The memories come flooding in and I can't scoop them out fast enough. We're sinking I shout to everyone in earshot! I take a walk, a shower, a swim. I bake bread and make crazy soups from leftovers and write in my journal but I am still desperate and sinking. This is November. Every November. The month of overwhelm and drowning.
“. . . None of us are born as passive generic blobs waiting for
the world to stamp its imprint on us. Instead we show up possessing
already a highly refined and individuated soul.
Another way of thinking of it is: We're not born with unlimited choices.
We can't be anything we want to be.
We
come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job
to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the
cradle, and we're stuck with it.
Our job in this lifetime is not
to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to
find out who we already are and become it.”
―
Steven Pressfield,
The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle
“Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only
when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he
replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.”
―
Steven Pressfield,
The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle
How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.
When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around
us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned
favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a
magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights
accrete.”
―
Steven Pressfield,
The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle
“Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.
Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
Resistance
is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of
Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise,
the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and
to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it
meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.”
―
Steven Pressfield,
The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle
The kid went down to the bottom of the pool and never returned. He was blue when they found him. Cause of death; drowning while distracted lifeguard was scrolling on his phone.
I just made a huge batch of hummus from the pound of chick peas I cooked yesterday. It's just not as good as it could be.
It struck me as bland. So I added more garlic and salt. Perhaps I included too much chick pea liquid or maybe I need to add more freshly squeezed lemon juice
or more tahini. Now my tongue is
tired from over tasting. I'm going to let it rest in the fridge.
No matter what it won't be wasted because I can freeze pints of it to use as a soup base which works out well. Maybe my memory is faulty about proportions and the tahini brand is different and so many variables.
It's good but usually it's great. My husband will taste it and he might know. It might be a simple as needing more salt. I'll consider it a dress rehearsal.
Update it tasted good after a rest in the fridge. I added salt and juice of another lemon. I will return to my favorite tahini brand, JOYVA.
When I make hummus I usually start with soaking a pound of chick peas...So when I'm done I have to freeze a few pints of it. Tonight I discovered that a defrosted pint of hummus with water added makes a great soup base and thickener for a chicken vegetable soup.
How does Shabbat, what you also call “oasis time,” restore your soul?
It helps me reorient to what matters most in my life. It resets my
inner compass so that I can remember and act on what is important and
meaningful to me. It gives me time to rest and regain my bearings. It
breaks the fatigue and burnout cycle that would otherwise rob me of my
zest and health. And it allows for a time of genial, unhurried
connections with my family, friends, and community.
My parents never told a soul. Not about the attempt, not about the rift
between us afterwards. Didn’t admit it happened even when we were alone.
They didn’t stop smiling at me from the moment they came and got me
until months after that summer was over. It was a plague of happiness,
infectious and rotten. Who was I to cure it with something as
inconsequential as the truth?
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that
comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things
have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in
your gratitude.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and
sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a
trumpet.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the
kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual
inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else
believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is
easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in
the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of
solitude.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
The Complete Prose Works Of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is what I just made in my gigantic pot. It came out so good I had to write it down. It was total improvisation. I thought I was using split peas but they were red lentils. There is a difference.
1 pound red lentils rinsed, 15 ounces pumpkin, 4 chicken bullion cubes, water, a full bunch of celery chopped, 3 white onions, 1 pound of chopped carrots, 1 bulb of garlic cloves peeled, cored and beheaded, knob of ginger, 3 or 4 frozen skinless chicken breasts, olive oil.
I pressure cooked it for an hour and then I added a pound of frozen cut leaf spinach. I added a splash of red wine vinegar, kosher salt & sriracha.
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Simone Weil Letter to Joë Bousquet on April 13, 1942. "Correspondance", published by Editions l'Age d'Homme in Lausanne, p. 18, 1982.
The need of truth is more sacred than any other need. Simone Weil, Truth Is "The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind".
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them. Simone Weil
Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on. Simone Weil
Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego. Simone Weil
Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility. Simone Weil
There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction. Simone Weil
If someone does me injury I must desire that this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for him who inflicts it, in order that he may not really have done evil. Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.74, Psychology Press
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand. Simone Weil (1978). “Lectures on Philosophy”, p.139, Cambridge University Press
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through? Simone Weil (1973). “Waiting for God”
To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. Simone Weil Simone Weil (2003). “The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind”, p.43, Routledge
All sins are attempts to fill voids. Simone Weil Inspirational, Memorable, Void La Pesanteur et la Grace "Desirer sans Objet" (1948)
Whenever one tries to suppress doubt , there is tyranny. Simone Weil (1978). “Lectures on Philosophy”, p.103, Cambridge University Press
The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it. Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.81, Psychology Press
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell. Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.26, Wipf and Stock Publishers
...nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature. Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.79, Routledge
Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him. Simone Weil (1973). “Waiting for God: Translated by Emma Craufurd ; With an Introd. by Leslie A. Fiedler”
Power ... is the supreme end for all those who have not understood. Simone Weil Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.146, Psychology Press
God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves. Simone Weil Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.62, Psychology Press
Love: To feel with one's whole self the existence of another being. Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.9, Wipf and Stock Publishers
It is only from the light which streams constantly from heaven that a tree can derive the energy to strike its roots deep into the soil. The tree is in fact rooted in the sky. Simone Weil
Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.71, Psychology Press
A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves. Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.72, Psychology Press
Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction. Simone Weil (2015). “First and Last Notebooks: Supernatural Knowledge”, p.42, Wipf and Stock Publishers
Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.117, Psychology Press
I know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience,
but I do not cling to them; they pass through me, like life itself, as a
broad eternal stream...and life continues.
“Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas
of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward
others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will
also be in our troubled world.”
―
Etty Hillesum
“I really see no other solution than to turn inwards and to root
out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change
anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to
me the only lesson to be learned.”
―
Etty Hillesum,
Lettres de westerbork
Yesterday it was cold out. It was 43 degrees during the day! I defrosted my homemade tomato sauce from July and poured some into a small square Pyrex dish and layered it alternating with thin no-boil lasagna noodles, sauce, and some slices of Asiago cheese. I baked it at 400 covered with Aluminum foil for 35 minutes and then removed the foil to bake it 10 minutes more. We had it with fresh sauteed & steamed garlic broccoli and it was delicious and colorful.
My effort, I think, as a writer for all of my adult life is, I have no interest in being the writer or the reader’s authority about anything. I hope, in nonfiction, to write in an authoritative way and to earn the trust and respect of a reader. But mostly what I’m interested in is being the reader’s companion. I want a reader to feel that there is room for them – for their intellect and for their imagination – in the prose that I try to craft on a page.
When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice, about finding a voice and speaking with this voice, but the older I get I think it’s not about voice, it’s about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don’t just mean with the ear; bringing the quality of attention to the world. The writers I like best are those who attend.
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives
valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is
no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement,
and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring
greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take
what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates
its own darkness.”
―
Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death
hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
―
Marcus Aurelius
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal
with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous
and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil.
But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have
recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of
the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of
the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in
ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born
to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth,
upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at
someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
―
Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
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