Latest Blog Posts — Page 6
Oath, Reaffirmed
I am because I am! means I exist because I exist and need no justification whatsoever for my existence. The fact of my being is enough. I require no terms, conditions or permits from myself or anyone else. I live, and in living I am fully entitled to go on living. My life, my existence, my being is not predicated on standards, values, achievements or accomplishments …
“How do I feel?” is a very important question as applied to people, issues, myself and especially as to my state of well-being. If I feel good, that’s good. If I feel bad, then is there anything I can do to make myself feel better? Am I involved in any way in a self-hating enterprise? Most important, do I feel bad because I haven’t accomplished enough? Achieved enough? Conformed enough? This is blackmail and antithetical to my philosophy. I must fight to give myself the right to feel good about myself and to feel good mood-wise, regardless of any accomplishment or nonaccomplishment whatsoever.
— Compassion and Self-Hate, Theodore Issac Rubin
The Dust of the Ground
Before they’re plumbers or writers or taxi drivers or unemployed or journalists, before everything else, men are men. Whether heterosexual or homosexual. The only difference is that some of them remind you of it as you meet them, and others wait for a little while. You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they’re simply unbearable.
—Practicalities, Marguerite Duras