"I think, therefore, I am" - Rene Descartes
Favorite Quotations
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annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
"Your problem, Werner," says Frederick, "is that you still believe you own your life."
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
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annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
I'm going through years of notebooks I kept for school: Lecture notes, quotations, calculations, daydreams. Sometimes I wrote carefully, sometimes my writing was a mess - scribbled, almost illegible - no time for neatness. I used lines from this famous poem by Yeats in my final paper for an American Literature class taken when I was on my way to a degree in English, before I took the Intro to Psychology class that blew me off course and compelled me to get a degree in Psychology instead.
The line to end all lines:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Willian Butler Yeats
The line to end all lines:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Willian Butler Yeats
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
Impatient
Diamonds dance across water
Gnats frantic above the reeds
Hawks spiral, circling the sun
Face lifted, warmed, caressed
Fishing boats wait silently, listening
Summer waits offstage
But the lake is impatient
Diamonds dance across water
Gnats frantic above the reeds
Hawks spiral, circling the sun
Face lifted, warmed, caressed
Fishing boats wait silently, listening
to the undulating murmur of distant traffic.
Leaves catch the breeze and let it go again Summer waits offstage
But the lake is impatient
and starts her own show.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
Note from one of my professors:
"I see your argument and I agree - in class I wasn't quite sure of your full position, but you are correct, now that I see it."
"I see your argument and I agree - in class I wasn't quite sure of your full position, but you are correct, now that I see it."
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
If I never see you again
I will always carry you
inside
outside
on my fingertips
and at brain edges
and in centers
centers
of what I am of
what remains.
Charles Bukowski
I will always carry you
inside
outside
on my fingertips
and at brain edges
and in centers
centers
of what I am of
what remains.
Charles Bukowski
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
Words are loneliness.
Henry Miller
Henry Miller
When I was a kid we experimented with poetry where the way you write it on paper enlivens the meaning...there's a word for it but I can't recall. A very long time ago. I still remember the exercise though. Mine were
l
o
n
e
l
i
n
e
s
s
o
n
e
l
i
n
e
s
s
and
...............................s
.............................n
.....................o
..................o
..................l
.............l
ba
Except without the periods, since we did them on a typewriter.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
... but for three years I had roses...
Valerie, V for Vendetta
Valerie, V for Vendetta
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
That's such a gentle understatement, like you'd be making a soft landing on a fluff of down comforter or something. :chuckle:
That's certainly not my experience, which involves tripping over my own feet and falling down a flight of cement stairs 50 times a day. (Metaphorically, of course, but no less bruising to the psyche...
)
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
I keep coming back to this, maybe because there's this thought that if I trip myself enough times, eventually I'm gonna land across that threshold.
Anyway, I was at the bookstore today and was looking through a book of poetry and found the following, which reminded me once again of your quotation.
The Water Flows Uphill
The heart is a muscle like any other and the best exercise you can do for it is called picking yourself up off the floor.
Iain S. Thomas, I Wrote This For You: Just The Words
How apropos. :chuckle:
I ended up buying the book, so here's a bonus:
The Nerve Endings Shatter Like Glass
It doesn't hurt because if you keep hurting the same part of you again and again and again, the nerve endings all die. And when that happens, that part of you goes numb. That's why it doesn't hurt. Don't be proud of it.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
If you've wondered what you would have done in 1930s Germany or during the civil rights movement, congratulations: you're doing it now.
Matthew Miller
Matthew Miller
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. 7 Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the LORD and turn away from evil. 8 It will be healing to your body And refreshment to your bones.
annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
"Your ‘little men,’ your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemöller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing; and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something—but then it was too late."
"Yes," I said.
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
"Yes," I said.
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45
Psalm 118:8
8 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.
8 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.
Sounds to me like the left's game plan