05.22.20
Currently revisiting... Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
49. To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.
Even as I write this, I know that between me and my beloved, truth recedes with every word I set down.
Geraldine Brooks, March
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
We are our own demons, we expel ourselves from our paradise.
J.W. Goethe, Notes of The Sorrows of Young Werther
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“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”
literature posters; never let me go by kazuo ishiguro
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Everyone saw in my face evil traits that I didn’t possess. But they assumed I did, and so they developed. I was modest, and was accused of being deceitful: I became secretive. I had a strong sense of good and evil; instead of kindness I received nothing but insults, so I grew resentful. I was gloomy, other children were merry and talkative. I felt myself superior to them, but was considered inferior: I became envious. I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, so I learned to hate. My colorless youth was spent in a struggle with myself and with the world. Fearing mockery, I buried my best feelings at the bottom of my heart: there they died.
Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (trans. Vladimir Nabokov)
--plumes like pampas grass in a tropic gale in her breast
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
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memoryslandscape-deactivated202
Seeing is for us the authentic possibility of acquiring something. If God had only made our hands to be like our eyes–so ready to grasp, so willing to relinquish all things–then we could truly acquire wealth. We do not acquire wealth by letting something remain and wilt in our hands but only by letting everything pass through their grasp as if through the festive gate of return and homecoming. Our hands ought not to be a coffin for us but a bed sheltering the twilight slumber and dreams of the things held there, out of whose depths their dearest secrets speak. Once out of our hands, however, things ought to move forward, now sturdy and strong, and we should keep nothing of them but the courageous morning melody that hovers and shimmers behind their fading steps.
Rainer Maria Rilke, from “On Life and Living,” The Poet’s Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke, ed. and trans. Ulrich Baer (Modern Library, 2005)
#'our hands ought not to be a coffin for us but a bed sheltering the twilight slumber oand dreams of the things held there'#well...#just carve my heart out with a silver spoon#mourning#letting go#***#if only our hands were more like our eyes#rilke...#ya need to stop#rainer maria rilke#quotes#the poet's guide to life#currently reading#remember#personal#sight#rilke
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I want–I want–I want–was all that she could think about–but just what this real want was she did not know.
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
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mulderscullyinthetardis
“I could not look at her and not want to touch her. I could not see the shine upon her pink lips, without wanting to step to her and press my mouth to it.”
- - ‘Tipping the Velvet’, by Sarah Waters, with Rachael Stirling (Nan) & Jodhi May (Florence) in the BBC adaptation [2002]
anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
At some point, you have to set down the past. At some point, you have to accept that everyone was doing their best. At some point, you have to gather yourself up, and go onward into your life.
Olivia Laing, The Trip to Echo Spring
Despair is often premature: it's a form of impatience as well as uncertainty.
Rebecca Solnit, from the Forward to the Third Edition, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
I've seen enough change in my lifetime to know that despair is not only self-defeating, it is unrealistic.
A remark by feminist Susan Griffin, from the Forward to the Third Edition of Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
#i know i know i know but DEPRESSION#rebecca solnit#susan griffin#hope in the dark#quotes#despair#on despair#hope#hope in the dark: untold histories wild possibilities#currently reading#i'm still making my way through the forward on my mobile kindle app#there is not enough time in the day for all i want to read
One of the essential aspects of depression is the sense that you will always be mired in this misery, that nothing can or will change. It's what makes suicide so seductive as the only visible exit from the prison of the present. There's a public equivalent to private depression, a sense that the nation or the society rather than the individual is stuck. Things don't always change for the better, but they change, and we can play a role in that change if we act. Which is where hope comes in, and memory, the collective memory we call history.
Rebecca Solnit, from the Forward to the Third Edition, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
hope is only a beginning; it’s not a substitute for action, only a basis for it.
Rebecca Solnit, from the Forward to the Third Edition, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
grief and hope can coexist.
Rebecca Solnit, reminding me of an essential truth, from the Forward to the Third Edition, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Provide hope and inspiration for the collective action to build collective power to achieve collective transformation, rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams.
Rebecca Solnit, from the Forward to the Third Edition, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Change is rarely straightforward... sometimes it's as complex as chaos theory and as slow as evolution. Even things that seem to happen suddenly arise from deep roots in the past or from long-dormant seeds.
Rebecca Solnit, from the Forward to the Third Edition (2015), Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities