The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.
—Gaston Bachelard
Posts tagged "independence"
Prim No. 7
Stoic and Little Hedonistic
The attitude of earning merit through work leaves little room for fun and pleasure, dimensions with which this character is unfamiliar. Pleasure is felt by always finding satisfaction in doing, but directed towards something (a goal) or someone. It is difficult to be aware of what increases the happiness of one without including the other, in fact this character is not clear about what makes her feel good. Contact with nature, silence, being with oneself, listening to music, dedicating time to oneself, are the possibilities that one sometimes allows oneself and that are closest to an idea of pleasure, but, on the other hand, the pleasure of endless movement, of spontaneity, and freedom of action and speech is hindered.
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
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