Excerpts – Prim

Excerpts / October 7, 2024

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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Excerpts / October 6, 2024

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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Excerpts / October 2, 2024

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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Excerpts / September 28, 2024

Oath Complement

I am I is the essence of self-acceptance. But it is not passive or selective self-acceptance. It is active, loud, strong, and, if necessary, heroically aggressive. It applies to all aspects of self. It is dictated to only by the highest regard and dedication to individuality, however, that individuality may conform or depart from what are commonly regarded as “cultural norms.” This includes all thoughts, ideas, feelings, desires, decisions, and eventually actions. I includes all that I am. Judgment value, moral equivocation, cultural and conventional values, the ideas of others do not cause me to deaden, reprise, or attempt to cut off parts of myself. I includes all that the culture may see as assets, liabilities, limitations, resources, insensitivities, cruelites, neurotic, good, bad, sensitive, wise, or stupid in me.
— Compassion and Self-Hate, Theodore Issac Rubin

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Excerpts / September 28, 2024

Oath

In a state of grace with myself, I do not abandon myself when the going is tough or should others find me antithetical in any way in their frames of reference. Loyalty means care and kindness at all times, and particularly when they are needed to reduce the pain of difficult times. I never, absolutely never, side with anyone who is against my welfare, I aid nobody who detracts from my dignity, who makes me feel less than human either through subhuman onslaughts or superhuman demands. I fight or avoid people whose effect is ultimately destructive to my validity as a person, or who in any way dilute my ability to take myself seriously.
— Compassion and Self-Hate, Theodore Issac Rubin

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