Posts in "Excerpts" Category

Starry-eyed

It’s been at least three decades since she told me that she wanted to disappear without leaving a trace, and I’m the only one who knows what she means. She never had in mind any sort of flight, a change of identity, the dream of making a new life somewhere else. And she never thought of suicide, repulsed by the idea that Rino would have anything to do with her body, and be forced to attend to the details. She meant something different: she wanted to vanish; she wanted every one of her cells to disappear, nothing of her ever to be found. And since I know her well, or at least I think I know her, I take it for granted that she has found a way to disappear, to leave not so much as a hair anywhere in this world …

She was expanding the concept of trace out of all proportion. She wanted not only to disappear herself, now, at the age of sixty-six, but also to eliminate the entire life that she had left behind.

— My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

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Compelling Enthusiasm

The reason most people find healing so hard is that they’ve had so little help, so little guidance, and so little information. Emotional recovery can be, and should be, a joyous journey. People who get the right pieces in place find that:

  • healing moves fast.
  • some gains are immediate, with many more to follow.
  • the pleasure greatly outweighs the pain.
  • the parts that do involve hard work are so rewarding that the underlying feeling remains, “I can totally do this.”
  • healing is not a solitary undertaking, and it leads rapidly to greater and greater connection …

If you’re still alive, there’s still time. You can gain back a vibrant, connected, satisfying life. Pain, anxiety, and isolation do not need to dominate.

— The Joyous Recovery, Lundy Bancroft

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Thou Shall Not

What is dread? It is a feeling that you will experience some unknown and unnamed doom if you proceed.

But why would a person feel dread about saving some money, or securing private documents, or gathering information about a possible life change? The answer can be found in what these women all had in common. They were all acting, or about to act, on their own behalf without permission from a man …

An unwritten taboo that is still built into most cultures is about the subjugation of women.

The evil taboo: “You may not act without permission from a man.”

The fear: “Acting on your own behalf will bring you harm.”

— Victory Over Verbal Abuse, Patricia Evans

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Static

Ah! Mama! I can’t pray anymore and I weep more and more rarely.

But my soul thinks of you, of my thoughts, and my thoughts are consumed in grief.

I don’t ask you to pray for me. You know yourself what sorrows I may have. Tell me, dear mother, from the other world, from Paradise, from the clouds, from wherever you are, does my love console you?

Can my words distill for you a little sweetness, tender and caressing?

— My Life, Marc Chagall

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The Snail

“A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell,” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being.”
— The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard

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