more truthful lives

from everyone loves a good train wreck by eric wilson

"death's perpetual certitude inspires us to imagine more truthful lives. but death, by thwarting narcissism, also elevates our ethical imaginations. what does the egotist believe but that his existence is more important than those of others, that his self is of immense value and preeminently worthy of being nourished and perpetuated? death deflates this puffery, positing that all attempts to boost the "i" are ultimately vain. though you are unique on one level, on another you are the same as everyone else: you will suffer and die and return to the dirt.

shaking us out of narcissism, death calls us to merge with our fellows, to enter into a global community bound by hurt. it says: you are dying, and this is pain, and you would like to alleviate it in any way possible, and so now you apprehend the plight of all others, also moribund and agonized and in need of succor. obviously, when we experience this distress, we don't by necessity become aware of the miseries of others. we can hurt selfishly, convincing ourselves that our discomfort is worse than anyone else's and thus deserving of the most care. but hopefully we will, when we realize that our lot is common, suffer charitably, and so translate our own groaning into empathy with another's torment."

kudos

quotes from kudos by rachel cusk

"i said that while her story suggested that human lives could be governed by the laws of narrative, and all the notions of retribution and justice that narrative lays claim to, it was in fact merely her interpretation of events that created that illusion. the couple's divorce, in other words, had nothing to do with her secret envy of them and her desire for their downfall: it was her own capacity for storytelling - which, as i had already told her, had affected me all those years ago - that made her see her own hand in what happened around her. yet the suspicion that her own desires were shaping the lives of other people, and even causing them to suffer, did not seem to lead her to feel guilt. it was an interesting idea, i said, that the narrative impulse might spring from the desire to avoid guilt, rather than from the need - as was generally assumed - to connect things together in a meaningful way; that it was a strategy calculated, in other words, to disburden ourselves of responsibility."

"'i have known many men,' sophia said, resting her slender arms on the table, whose white cloth was littered with crumpled napkins and wine stains and half-eaten pieces of bread, 'from many different parts of the world, and the men of this nation,' she said, blinking her painted eyes and smiling, 'are the sweetest but also the most childlike. behind every man is his mother,' she said, 'who made so much fuss of him he will never recover from it, and will never understand why the rest of the world doesn't make the same fuss of him, particularly the woman who has replaced his mother and who he can neither trust nor forgive for replacing her. these men like nothing better than to have a child,' she said, 'because then the whole cycle is repeated and they feel comfortable. men from other places are different,' she said, 'but in the end neither better nor worse: they are better lovers but less courteous, or they are more confident but less considerate. 'the english man,' she said, looking at me, 'is in my experience the worst, because he is neither a skilled lover nor a sweet child, and because his idea of a woman is something made of plastic not flesh. the english man is sent away from his mother, and so he wants to marry his mother and perhaps even to be his mother, and while he is usually polite and reasonable to women, as a stranger would be, he doesn't understand what they are."

ambiguous loss

from ambiguous loss by pauline boss

"the outcomes of ptsd are also similar, though not identical, to outcomes of long-term ambiguous loss. both can result in depression, anxiety, psychic numbing, distressing dreams, and guilt. but ambiguous loss is unique in that the trauma goes on and on in what families describe as a rollercoaster ride, during which they alternate between hope and hopelessness. a loved one is missing, then sighted, then lost again. or a family member is dying, then goes into remission, then the illness returns again in full force. hopes are raised and dashed so many times that psychically people no longer react."

"learning to live with the ambiguity of divorce and remarriage requires a whole new set of skills. the first is to revise our perception of who our family is and who it is not. . . all this requires a second skill, the ability to let go of needing an absolute and precise definition of family. . . rather than weakening the family, such elasticity in family composition enhances resilience and flexibility. . . in a sense one has to abandon the concept of monogamy in order to make divorce and remarriage work because a first marriage does not simply stop when a second one starts. it is forever a part of the fabric of one's life."

"ambivalence can result from the ambiguity of not knowing who is included in the structure that is supposed to be one's family. conflicting impulses that may exist in the psyche are often a consequence of this uncertainty.

ambivalence is often intensified by deficiencies outside the family -- officials cannot find a missing person or medical experts cannot clearly diagnose or cure a devastating illness. because of the ambiguity, loved ones can't make sense out of their situation and emotionally are pulled in opposing directions -- love and hate for the same person; acceptance and rejection of their caregiving role; affirmation and denial of their loss. often people feel they must withhold their emotions and control their aggressive feelings because social norms dictate that becoming upset is inappropriate and will only bring further harm to the missing person, demented elder, or comatose child. this is the bind, especially for women, who are most often caught in caregiving or waiting roles.

mixed emotions are compounded when a separation involves the potential of irretrievable loss. when there is a chance that we will never see a loved one again, we protect ourselves from the prospect of losing that person by becoming ambivalent -- holding our spouse at arm's length, picking a fight with a parent, or shutting a sibling out even when he or she is still physically present. anticipating a loss, we both cling to our loved ones and push them away. we resist their leaving and at the same time want to be finished with the goodbye."

"if we are to turn the corner and cope with uncertain losses, we must first temper our hunger for mastery. this is the paradox. to regain a sense of mastery when there is ambiguity about a loved one's absence or presence, we must give up trying to find the perfect solution. we must redefine our relationship to the missing person. most important, we must realize that the confusion we are experiencing is attributable to the ambiguity rather than to something we did -- or neglected to do."

"for people who are accustomed to having some control over their lives, insight appears to help; such people want to understand 'why,' to penetrate the deeper meaning of an experience before they risk doing something different. but for others, insight is gained experientially, not cognitively. for them, the family therapist carl whitaker was right when he said, 'you only know what something is after you've gone past it.' people have to experience a phenomenon before they can understand it. what is clear to me is that we as clinicians must be more sensitive to individual differences in ways of understanding a situation if we are to avoid creating the very resistance we sometimes attribute to the people we are trying to help."

bridging

by marge piercy from to be of use

being together is knowing
even if what we know
is that we cannot really be together
caught in the teeth of the machinery
of the wrong moments of our lives.

a clear umbilicus
goes out invisibly between,
thread we spin fluid and finer than hair
but strong enough to hang a bridge on.

that bridge will be there
a blacklight rainbow arching out of your skull
whenever you need
whenever you can open your eyes and want
to walk upon it.

nobody can live on a bridge
or plant potatoes
but it is fine for comings and goings,
meetings, partings and long views
and a real connection to someplace else
where you may
in the crazy weathers of struggle
now and again want to be.

ONE DAY

by grace paley from fidelity

one day

one of us

will be lost

to the other

this has been

talked about but

lightly    turning

away    shyness  this

business of con-

fronting the

preference for

survival

my mother said    the

children are grown   we

are both so sick    let us

die together    my father

replied     no no   you

will be well   he lied

of course i

want you in the world

whether i’m in it or

not    your spirit

i probably mean

there is always

something to say    in

the end    speaking

without breath    one

of us will be lost

to the other

l&c rendezvous

1
what is nearest to me

shadows straining to make
out angles, fixed lines
which hold me cold
and are not what i desire but witness
nonetheless

day to day parades with some measure
of beiges, browns, drumbeat and slight
gestures, pockets of red

windows steam

silence punctuated unlike glass or metal
humid with laughter and sometimes the fear

of being found

2
with winter so close i know
now the ice cream is less
sweet and what compels me to burn
myself remains the same

what compels me to remain

the sweetness

3
if i could just
cup my hands i could just press my chest i could just count your breaths i could just
(sigh)

stay

4
day in i remember the ways you left suddenly
early like stale bread and the door

until i asked another difficult question that again
felt like a small heavy rope

will you stay with
this moment
in the morning
of our lives


11/13/17

the appeal of reading

from the uncommon reader by alan bennett

"'i read i think,' she said to norman, 'because one has a duty to find out what people are like,' a trite enough remark of which norman took not much notice, feeling himself under no such obligation and reading purely for pleasure, not enlightenment, though part of the pleasure was the enlightenment, he could see that. but duty did not come into it."

"the appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. all readers were equal, herself included. literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic."

return to madison

by virginia hamilton adair from ants on the melon

it is the autumn of 1936,
my bus from the east coast rumbling
into this place that william ellery called
"the shining city of my manhood's grief."
i wear a ring with seven small diamonds
and a couple more, a little larger.
i am in love with at least two men, also
the trumpet of louis armstrong, poetry,
scholarship, ritual, ice-skating
at 10 below zero, drinking manhattans,
dancing, wisconsin lakes and woods,
being in love with almost everything.
a crisis looms ahead: a june marriage;
but 10 months are too endless to be real.
the other man listens for the phone.
we will be walking in vilas park
before sundown, and that huge feeling
vaster than the continent will rise
within us, unbidden, unforeseen, and i--
unlike the men i love-- never ask
to know what will happen next.
that shining return to a city bounded
by lakes i relive five decades later,
looking up from a stegner novel just begun,
staring into the dusk of a different time zone.
"i knew that the university was at one end
of state street and the state capitol at the other,"
and the exaltation of learning, the sorrow and joy
of that year of marvels pierce me:
one all-night blizzard, and the dawn footprints
leaving from my door, filling with fresh snow.

my life

by billy collins from picnic, lightning

sometimes i see it as a straight line
drawn with a pencil and a ruler
transecting the circle of the world

or as a finger piercing
a smoke ring, casual, inquisitive,

but then the sun will come out
or the phone will ring
and i will cease to wonder

if it is one thing,
a large ball of air and memory,
or many things,
a string of small farming towns,
a dark road winding through them.

let us say it is a field
i have been hoeing every day,
hoeing and singing,
then going to sleep in one of its furrows,

or now that it is more than half over,
a partially open door,
rain dripping from the eaves.

like yours, it could be anything,
a nest with one egg,
a hallway that leads to a thousand rooms-
whatever happens to float into view
when i close my eyes

or look out a window
for more than a few minutes,
so that some days i think
it must be everything and nothing at once.

but this morning, sitting up in bed,
wearing my black sweater and my glasses,
the curtains drawn and the windows up,

i am a lake, my poem is an empty boat,
and my life is the breeze that blows
through the whole scene

stirring everything it touches-
the surface of the water, the limp sail,
even the heavy, leafy trees along the shore.

a formative experience of powerlessness

from transit by rachel cusk

"he had felt for the first time that he was at home: the feeling of having unwittingly caused an irreversible change, of his failure being the force that broke new ground, was, he realised standing there, the deepest and most familiar thing he knew. by failing he created loss, and loss was the threshold to freedom: an awkward and uncomfortable threshold, but the only one he had ever been able to cross; usually, he said, because he was shoved across it as a consequence of the events that had brought him there."

"i said it seemed to me that most marriages worked in the same way that stories are said to do, through the suspension of disbelief. it wasn't, in other words, perfection that sustained them so much as the avoidance of certain realities. i was well aware, i said, that gerard had constituted one such reality at the time those events had occurred. his feelings had to be ridden roughshod over; the story couldn't be constructed otherwise. yet now, i said, when i thought about that time, these discarded elements - everything that had been denied or wilfully forgotten in the service of that narrative - were what increasingly predominated. like the objects i had left in his flat, these discarded things had changed their meanings over the years, and not always in a way that was easy to accept. my own indifference to gerard's suffering, for example, which at the time i had barely considered, had come to seem increasingly criminal to me. the things that i had jettisoned in my pursuit of a new future, now that that future had itself been jettisoned, retained a growing power of accusation, to the extent that i had come to fear that i was being punished in direct proportion to something i hadn't even managed to assess or enumerate. perhaps, i said, it is never clear what should be saved and what destroyed."

"sometimes he almost wished he had never shown her a violin in the first place, which goes to show, he said, that we examine least what has formed us the most, and instead find ourselves driven blindly to re-enact it. maybe it's only in our injuries, he said, that the future can take root."

"at first, his mother accused him of making it all up. and part of him almost believed her: the problem with being honest, he said, is that you're slow to realise that other people can lie."

"when he wrote his book, he said, what he desired was to express himself in a way that was free of shame. one source of that shame was other people's knowledge of him: yet what they knew was not the truth. the truth, he realised, was something he assiduously hid from others. when he wrote his book it was this desire to be free of shame that drove him on. he wrote it in the belief that he was addressing someone who didn't know him at all, and who therefore he didn't have to be embarrassed in front of. that person was effectively himself."

"when i went back to the sitting room i was struck by the sight of jane's jewel-coloured clothing amid the white landscape of dust sheets. she had remained very still, her knees together and her head erect, her pale fingers evenly splayed around the teacup. i found myself wondering who exactly she was: there was a sense of drama about her that seemed to invite only two responses - either to become absorbed or to walk away. yet the prospect of absorption seemed somehow arduous: i recalled her remarks about the draining nature of students and thought how often people betrayed themselves by what they noticed in others."

"what she did learn from all the books was something else, something she hadn't really been expecting, which was that the story of loneliness is much longer than the story of life. in the sense of what most people mean by living, she said. without children or partner, without meaningful family or a home, a day can last an eternity: a life without a story, a life in which there is nothing - no narrative flights, no plot developments, no immersive human dramas - to alleviate the cruelly meticulous passing of time."

"it was perfectly possible to become the prisoner of an artist's vision, i said. like love, i said, being understood creates the fear that you will never be understood again."

"i had been thinking lately about evil, i went on, and was beginning to realise that it was not a product of will but of its opposite, of surrender. it represented the relinquishing of effort, the abandonment of self-discipline in the face of desire."

"that idea - of one's own life as something that had already been dictated - was strangely seductive, until you realised that it reduced other people to the moral status of characters and camouflaged their capacity to destroy. yet the illusion of meaning recurred, much as you tried to resist it: like childhood, i said, which we treat as an explanatory text rather than merely as a formative experience of powerlessness. for a long time, i said, i believed that it was only through absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. but my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though i had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. i had started to become, in effect, angry. i had started to desire power, because what i now realised was that other people had had it all along, that what i called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage.

he was watching me while i spoke, with strange-coloured eyes that reminded me of peat or earth and that now seemed strangely naked, as though by removing his glasses he had also removed the shield of adulthood. i saw that there were plates of food on the table, though i couldn't remember the waiter bringing them. he was struck, he said, by my allusion to anger: it was a biblical word and carried connotations of righteousness, but he had always believed anger to be the most mysterious and dangerous of human qualities, precisely because it had no fixed moral identity."

losing heart

by maggie nelson, from shiner

it feels good
like being
inside a car
in a car

wash, the froth
swopping
the roof, the
windows, a regular

murder of dirt.
but what if
it's the self
at stake, not

crimson with sin
just weary of
its own
contours, the run-on

sentence of its
thought. on
the inside looking
out, a window

streaked with black
effluvia, always
threatening to
become a hunk of

something that
won't budge. when
i was a younger man
it was all about

mozart. then later,
beethoven. then
later still -- mozart!
after that, beethoven!

ah, but mozart. ah,
but beethoven.
you don't really

have to believe in
yourself, only
in your circulation.

the original choice

from existentialism and human emotions by jean-paul sartre

"certainly, many people believe that when they do something, they themselves are the only ones involved, and when someone says to them, 'what if everyone acted that way?' they shrug their shoulders and answer, 'everyone doesn't act that way.' but really, one should always ask himself, 'what would happen if everybody looked at things that way?' there is no escaping this disturbing thought except by a kind of double-dealing. a man who lies and makes excuses for himself by saying 'not everybody does that,' is someone with an uneasy conscience, because the act of lying implies that a universal value is conferred upon the lie."

"all leaders know this anguish. that doesn't keep them from acting; on the contrary, it is the very condition of their action. for it implies that they envisage a number of possibilities, and when they choose one, they realize that it has value only because it is chosen. we shall see that this kind of anguish, which is the kind that existentialism describes, is explained, in addition, by a direct responsibility to the other men whom it involves. it is not a curtain separating us from action, but is part of action itself."

"on the one hand, an ethics of sympathy, of personal devotion; on the other, a broader ethics, but one whose efficacy was more dubious. he had to choose between the two."

"if values are vague, and if they are always too broad for the concrete and specific case that we are considering, the only thing left for us is to trust our instincts. that's what this young man tried to do; and when i saw him, he said, 'in the end, feeling is what counts. i ought to choose whichever pushes me in one direction."

"the only way to determine the value of this affection is, precisely, to perform an act which confirms and defines it. but, since i require this affection to justify my act, i find myself caught in a vicious circle. on the other hand, gide has well said that a mock feeling and a true feeling are almost indistinguishable."

"dishonesty is obviously a falsehood because it belies the complete freedom of involvement. on the same grounds, i maintain that there is also dishonesty if i choose to state that certain values exist prior to me; it is self-contradictory for me to want them and at the same state that they are imposed on me."

"in wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others depends on ours."

"empirical psychoanalysis seeks to determine the complex, the very name of which indicates the polyvalance of all the meanings which are referred back to it. existential psychoanalysis seeks to determine the original choice. this original choice operating in the face of the world and being a choice of position in the world is total like the complex; it is prior to logic like the complex. it is this which decides the attitude of the person when confronted with logic and principles; therefore there can be no possibility of questioning it in conformance to logic. it brings together in a prelogical synthesis the totality of the existent, and as such it is the center of reference for an infinity of polyvalent meanings."

the bus through jonesboro, arkansas

by matthew henriksen

Inanimate intimacy in the plural
Couples under their dark covers

The distance between one body and another
An echo chamber against every stone

The distance between lovers in a rock-lashing wave
The solitude of two together under the waters of night

Or the flattened space between two people on a bus
Talking above the low beams of a few lost trucks

Seeking their destruction or their portion elsewhere
A road imagined as a slick for words in a discrete stream

Flawless enamel the tongue slides along
Or skates off into a future illumined within a highway sign

At the lip of revelation comes denouement or slow torturous sleep
Because traveling does not follow music

Only music brings the body down from the sky
The solid body in its partial form

birth hurts

from the three escapes of hannah arendt by ken krimstein

"if we turn eichmann into a demonic monster, we somehow absolve him of his crime, and all of us of our potential crime, the crime of not thinking things through. the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."

"birth hurts. and instead of tromping along behind heidegger with the solipsistic certainty that life is merely a slog toward death... you showed him, and everyone else, that life is an endless stream of birth. ideas, actions, people, men, women, unpredictable, unique, spontaneous, so much so that the meaning of their actions isn't even comprehensible to the person doing the acting. that everything, everything is about stories, the stories we tell one another about what he did, or she did. because, as you always say, storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. but not only stories, you showed that it is essential to forgive, but not forgive and forget, forgive and remember. because forgiveness throws history a curveball. it is, as you say all the time, the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history."

burn my life down

from heart berries by terese marie mailhot

"zohar asked my mother if she could sleep next to my bed, on the floor. she listened to me all night. storytelling. what potential there was in being awful. my mindlessness became a gift. i didn't feel compelled to tell any moral tales or ancient ones. i learned how story was always meant to be for indian women: immediate and necessary and fearless, like all good lies."

"in my first writing classes, my professor told me that the human condition was misery. i'm a river widened by misery, and the potency of my language is more than human. it's an indian condition to be proud of survival but reluctant to call it resilience. resilience seems ascribed to a human conditioning in white people.

the indian condition is my grandmother. she was a nursery teacher. there are stories that she brought children to our kitchen, gave them laxatives, and then put newspaper on the ground. she squatted before them and made faces to illustrate how hard they should push. she dewormed children this way, and she learned that in residential school -- where parasites and nuns and priests contaminated generations of our people. . .

i can see grandmother's face in front of those children. her hands felt like rose petals, and he eyes were soft and round like buttons. she liked carnations and canned milk. she had a big heart for us kids. she transcended resilience and actualized what indians weren't taught to know: we are unmovable. time seems measured by grief and anticipatory grief, but i don't think she even measured time."

"you ruined me with touch. it was a different exploitation.

you asked me for my secret. i told you about the son who didn't live with me. i told you that i lock myself in the bathroom to cry when i remember his milk breath. i knew what it felt like to sleep next to him in bed, and he was just gone. i told you i go away.

you said you'd be on the other side of the door. that's how perfect love is at first. solutions are simple, and problems are laid out simply.

i knew that the way i had been living was too complicated for you to see up close. i should have consulted a healer before i went further with you.

our culture is based in the profundity things carry. we're always trying to see the world the way our ancestors did -- we feel less of a relationship to the natural world. there was a time when we dictated our beliefs and told ourselves what was real, or what was wrong or right. there weren't any abstractions. we knew that our language came before the world."

"i learned that any power asks you to dedicate your life to its expansion. things feel continuous when i think of my gifts and heritage. with you, things don't feel right sometimes. i believe you obstruct my healing.

what i notice with you is that i look outside whenever i'm close to a window, and i wonder how many women feel that way. i feel things i would rather feel alone.

things have become more real with you. every time i start to cry, you tell me that you can't keep me from leaving. i feel abject without your passion. i feel uncontrollable with you."

"you will always love me in a shadow. it's not torturous to be with you when i consider being without. instead of feeling the gasping pain of my powerlessness, i straddle it and put your hands on my breasts. i tell you that i'd burn my life down for you.

we try to remember each other this way, and i'm not sure how many times i can do this to you before i forget myself. i want you to will my pain away. i try to think that the things i do to you, i won't ever do harder to someone else."

"you said you love to failure. i made you full and flushed. you loved me until your body failed your will. you said making love was kissing my eyelids. i kept them open once and saw you differently. you rooted against me and forced my eyes closed like little coffins. i wondered how many bitter ghosts it took to create a cold feeling in a room. my face was covered in your sweat. i was all points and sharp corners before i loved you.

you don't appreciate that you've broken me. lovers want to undo their partners. i feel unveiled and more work than you had bargained for. i was unsure of the currency of men and unaware that losing myself would feel so physical."

"men objectify me, to such a degree that they forget i eat. you feed your dog more kindly than you feed me. that's men.

that was also my problem: an inability to distinguish you from other men when i am angry. i'm sorry. if only you could see how little i need in this hospital."

"the group counselor said that one must forgive for one's self and not for the perpetrator. this made little-to-no sense in my mind. we're all on meds here, most of us are half zombie and half antsy: a weird mix. in white culture, forgiveness is synonymous with letting go. in my culture, i believe we carry pain until we can reconcile it through ceremony. pain is not framed like a problem with a solution. i don't even know that white people see transcendence the way we do. i'm not sure that their dichotomies apply to me."

"terri explained self-esteem and its function, and i blame my mother for not saying these things. my mother wasn't big on esteem for herself, let alone trying to foster that in me. i think self-esteem is a white invention to further separate one person from another. it asks people to assess their values and implies people have worth. it seems like identity capitalism."

"she believed in subversion and turning things upside down. she mocked everything. my desire to be normal or sincere made her laugh.

'men will never love you,' she said once. 'they'll use you up, and, when you're bone dry and it's your time to write, you'll be alone without a goddamn typewriter to your name.'. . .

even mom's cynicism was subversive. she often said nothing would work out. she often said that trying was futile and still dedicated her life to other people through social work. when she was unemployed, she rallied for social justice. she did things that required hopefulness. she made a name as an angry indian woman who could consent and disallow things. indian women are usually discouraged from that basic agency."

"the first chapter in your book is titled 'wanting/ not-having.' you and i had a joke between us that i want you back, time and again, because i prefer wanting. even when i am there with you, beneath your breath, i still feel you withholding. it's like your breath -- that i know you've never had a cavity. you lean back and open your mouth. your mouth is so large and unashamed. i feel jealous and amorous when you tell me that.

i am partly sorry for the night i cried in front of you and began to hit myself. you had never seen me do that before. before, i was just temperamental about breakfast. the therapists reiterate that when i'm suicidal nobody is beholden to me. you have the right to walk away. i don't understand, though, why you would look at me the way you did."

"my body left resonance that can't be dismantled or erased. i don't know if men think about what seduction is. it was reading the work you love, and buying clothes, and making polite conversation with your friends -- convincing your mother that i could mother you like she does. it was laying warm towels across my legs before i shaved so that when you touched me, i was soft. it was withholding from you at the right times, and listening to you with my eyes and ears. i worked hard to assert intent on your bed and your body. i've soiled all beds for you with my wanting and preparation. i prepared myself for you as if i wasn't working as a server, going to college, or raising isaiah. the weigh and the dust of me are in every thread of your mattress. love is tactile learning, always, first and foremost."

 "because of my medication, i didn't cry over breakfast or minor transgressions. you believed me when i said the past was my fault. i believed me. when you were annoyed with me, i had to prove i was sane. i didn't speak my mind like i used to. you were beaming."

"i couldn't distinguish the symptoms from my heart. it was polarizing to be told there was a diagnosis for the behaviors i felt justified in having. and then, i knew some part of my disease was spiritual or inherited.

i had not stopped wanting to die. it was not romantic because it felt passionless - like a job i hated and needed. romanticism requires bravery and risk. the obsessive thoughts ruined things. good news was met with a numb feeling. the voice i heard was practical. it noted every opportunity to die and then noted how i refused to jump out of a moving car. i refused to take all the pills i could find. i refused to drink myself to death. i refused to cut my pregnant body. i refused to buy a gun. i refused to crash my car. and i refused to jump from a spaghetti interchange. i was aware of every opportunity i missed."

"i'm carrying a child by a man who abandoned me for being too emotional and then got me pregnant. my emotions are unreasonable, you say.

you talk to me like you're teaching rhetoric.

'you're making leaps,' you say. 'there are more pleasant ways of asking what you need from me.'

you carefully explain the semantics of your letter to lillis. you decide for both of us that, given my transgressions, yours pale in comparison.

my language strengthened through all this discourse. . .

you come back to the door to explain how you choose me every day. i only respond with questions.

'then why did you leave me in the hospital? what has changed since then, besides my pregnancy?'

i really want to know, and you can't explain. so, i can't fell safe. i can hear my aunt's voice, telling me that if my security depends on a man's words or action, i've lost sight of my power. i feel like i become worse, the more i know you love me. we are both worse for loving each other, it seems. it can get better. descending to ascend - they call it. everything feels ugly, and we are only at three months' gestation."

"the tips of you fingers feel like wet grapes. i wanted to bite every one. i told you that i needed help, and you asked me to leave. a friend of yours had just taken his own life. it seemed unforgivable that i would be suicidal or wild when you needed me. i know at my worst i appear disposable, or that i make myself that way."

"i went back to get my earrings from your house and saw you holding your laura in the doorway. i still knocked.

you told me to come back later.

how many times did i go back before i got pregnant? when did i become enough for you, and what was the distinction? it would help to know what makes me worthwhile, and what doesn't."

"'i'm not trying to be an asshole,' you say.

'sometimes trying to be the absence of something makes you that very thing.'

i understand i am talking about myself and leaving. we can sit together for hours with the deficit, and it's not unusual anymore - it's ritual. us both, trying to be the absence of something and forgiving each other for the children we have become."

"what do you even want with my sorrow? you are so inefficient with pain -- i realized you never had to cultivate it the way i did. the way indian women do.

you think weakness is a problem. i want to be torn apart by everything.

my people cultivated pain. in the way that god cultivated his garden with the foresight that he could not contain or protect the life within it. humanity was born out of pain.

i learned how to abstain from good things. i didn't expect the best things, and i have turned loss into a fortune -- a personal pleasure. it's not a sustainable joy, i know. i've seen you happy. being close to your joy has been a measured success. i've somehow retained myself, after all of this with you -- retained the ability to revel in loss. this loss has spun and twisted itself into silk my sons will hold to their faces.

i almost killed myself, trying to match your potential joy. it was taking my misery. the thing i am most familiar with. the thing i rove into love. i realized that i could have you and the pain.

pain expanded my heart. pain brought me to you, and our children have blood memories of sorrow and your joy, too. they inherited their share, to cultivate their own children, whose humanity and gentleness will remind them of you and me.

our boys, their compassion to will away inherited sorrow, it's what makes them good and mine and indian.

had i not been born and cultivated in this history, i wonder how dim and dumb my life would be. i feel fortunate with this education, and all these horrors, and you."

harbor

by maggie nelson, from shiner

not quite at home in the world
and turning toward the terminus

night-swimming with my sister
who stays back by the shore

the force that gets the body
out of the soul

what's person is what you hold
in your hand

a bottle of catsup
the pour of green water

if i were to escape beauty
into the season of giving

i would give to the birds,
the sad, and the leaning.

i would use simple language
to describe the forest. failing that,

i'd find a piano.
nickel body, nickel world

you are a figure illuminated
from behind by a light.

the underbelly of sunset
the rattling of blue logs.

the house is over. that is,
what you never went back for

has been loaded into a dumpster.
a bridge is an arc of green lights

over black water. this is memory
weather, and i remember

the roof in summer. how it stood.
how we stood upon it.

pessimism for mothers

from the emissary by yoko tawada

"in his youth, yoshiro had prided himself on always having an answer ready when someone asked who his favorite composer or designer was, or what kind of wine he preferred. confident in his good taste, he had poured time and money into surrounding himself with things that would show it off. now he no longer felt any need to use taste as the bricks and mortar for a structure called 'individuality.' though shoes were still important, he no longer chose them as a means of asserting his identity."

"one morning yoshiro agreed to meet an editor at a coffee shop, but by the time he'd finished making notes on the project they were to discuss he discovered it was way past the appointed time. when he reached the coffee shop and saw the editor sitting way at the back, shoulders drooping, head down, staring at the translucent skin that had formed on the surface of his milk tea, he wanted to apologize right away but couldn't get to the editor's table. for the whole coffee shop had turned into a parking lot for baby carriages. while babies slept soundly in their mobile beds, mothers talked with furrowed brows. fragments of conversation, phrases like 'recyclable resources,' or 'afraid my son might turn into a bird,' or 'putting profit before public health' floated through the air into his ears. while the women were lost in conversation their coffee grew cold in their cups, the cakes they forgot to order dried up inside glass cases, cracks forming in the icing on top. he caught sight of pessimism for mothers on the cover of a book one of the mothers held in one hand while she had the other thrust deep into her baby's carriage, making circling motions. sticking his neck out like a giraffe, yoshiro saw that the mother's hand was rubbing the head of her fidgety infant, round and round, making a tangled mess of the child's hair. was marika in another coffee shop like this one, reading and talking? having a hen party, or a bull session, was she shooting the breeze or just shooting -- what was she doing, anyway? yoshiro finished talking to his editor and left the coffee shop in a state of distraction. he then noticed that the street, too, was full of baby carriages. while yoshiro had been holed up in his study writing, the whole world had changed. all these children being born, flooding the city with baby carriages, filling the coffee shops with mothers. from beneath their cloth canopies, pacifiers protruding from their mouths like the beaks of birds, their tiny bodies making occasional ripples in their cloth swaddling, the new generation glared resentfully at yoshiro. so this was what a baby is. if he were to meet his daughter amana outside would she, too, look this strange? when the light turned green,, the white lines of the crosswalk disappeared beneath a torrent of baby carriages. there were baby carriages in front of every bookshelf in all the bookstores; in fact, yoshiro wasn't able to reach across the three baby carriages blocking his way to get the newly published paperback in praise of masturbation. still on tiptoe, he looked down into a baby's eyes, unclouded as a mirror, watching him.

not long after that, he heard the phrase 'baby carriage movement' from marika for the first time. this was a movement to encourage mothers to push their baby carriages around town every day as long as the sun was shining. . . pushing a baby carriage was the best way to tell how a town treated its pedestrians. mothers had to stop if there was no sidewalk, or too many steps. where the noise was nerve-racking, or there was too much carbon dioxide in the air, the baby would start howling. with lots of other baby carriages around a sort of domino effect kicked in until the collective howling was as loud as a siren, making passerby stop to think just how unpleasant or even dangerous this place was for human beings."

"'the whole human race is becoming feminized,' asserted some specialists, while others said, 'children who are born male turn into females, while those born female turn into males.'

in areas where culture dictated that female fetuses should be aborted, nature, enraged at humans disrupting her balance this way, had started playing various tricks. one trick was making sure that no one stayed the same sex all their lives. everyone's sex changed either once or twice, and people couldn't tell ahead of time how many times their sex would change."

"all through his childhood and youth, he'd kept his body moving, chasing after balls with his friends, yet he had almost no memory of touch, of his heart beating faster after coming into physical contact with another boy. not only other kids, even his own body had seemed to be moving on some two-dimensional plane like an anime character he could watch but never really touch. the closest thing to a sensual memory he had was of putting his hand into his catcher's mitt, that slight thrill he felt every time his skin touched leather, bringing the mitted hand up to his nose when the others weren't watching to breathe in the earthy aroma. once when a classmate called michiru had left her hand lying on top of her desk, he had touched it by mistake. he'd pulled away immediately, but the shock of feeling her warm, moist flesh stayed, carved into his memory. after that he was always aware of michiru, so much so that even when the classroom faded into black and white boredom, she alone appeared in living color. every time michiru said someone's name he was listening, he examined every letter on all her school papers, watched everything she did at recess. that single touch, apparently, had stolen the key to his heart."

forgetfulness

by billy collins from sailing alone around the room

the name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes ones you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of paraguay.

whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

it has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

no wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
no wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

the physical reality

from family life by akhil sharma

"it is also hard to remember how frugal we were. we saved the cotton that comes inside pill bottles. our mothers used it to make wicks. this frugality meant that we were sensitive to the physical reality of our world in a way most people no longer are. when my mother bought a box of matches, she had my brother sit at a table and use a razor to split the matches in half. when we had to light several things, we would use the match to set a twist of paper on fire and then walk around the apartment lighting the stove, the incense stick, the mosquito coil. this close engagement with things meant that we were conscious that the wood of a match is soft, that a bit of spit on paper slows down how it burns."

generosity & dignity

from beyond religion by the dalai lama

"a key element in biased feelings is what we can call 'attachment.' once, at a scientific conference in argentina, a mentor of my friend francisco varela told me that, as a scientist, he should not be too attached to his own field of research, as this might distort his ability to assess evidence objectively. hearing these words, i immediately felt they should also apply to the religious domain. for example, as a buddhist, i should strive not to develop excessive attachment toward buddhism. for to do so would hinder my ability to see the value of other faith traditions.

furthermore, when there is an element of attachment, our affection and concern for others are often dependent on the way those others relate to us. we feel concern for those who care for us and treat us well. but when our affection is dependent on the fulfillment of our own goals and expectations, which we project onto others, it will always be very fragile. so long as the others meet our expectations, everything is fine, but as soon as they do not, our feelings of affection can easily turn to resentment and even hatred."

"furthermore, although compassion arises from empathy, the two are not the same. empathy is characterized by a kind of emotional resonance -- feeling with the other person. compassion, in contrast, is not just sharing experience with others, but also wishing to see them relieved of their suffering. being compassionate does not mean remaining entirely at the level of feeling, which could be quite draining. after all, compassionate doctors would not be very effective if they were always preoccupied with sharing their patients' pain. compassion means wanting to do something to relieve the hardships of others, and this desire to help, far from dragging us further into suffering ourselves, actually gives us energy and a sense of purpose and direction. when we act upon this motivation, both we and those around us benefit still more."

"for many, it seems, there is a conflict between the principle of compassion, which implies forgiveness, and the exercise of justice, which requires punishment for wrongdoing. as they see it, the principle of justice or fairness, rather than that of compassion, must underpin any humanistic approach to ethics. to give priority to compassion and forgiveness, they argue, would allow perpetrators of harm to go unpunished and hand victory to the aggressors. the ethic of compassion, they say, amounts to little more than an ethic of victimhood, under which aggression always triumphs, wrongdoing is always forgiven, and the weak are defenseless. 

this objection rests, in my view, on a fundamental misunderstanding of what compassion entails in practice. nothing in the principle of compassion - the wish to see others relieved of suffering - involves surrendering to the misdeeds of others. nor does compassion demand that we meekly accept injustice. far from promoting weakness or passivity, compassion requires great fortitude and strength of character."

"compassion demands that we condemn wrong actions and oppose them with all means necessary, while at the same time forgiving and maintaining an attitude of kindness toward the perpetrators of those actions."

"an austrian economist named ernst fehr introduced an interesting concept that he calls 'altruistic punishment.' he illustrated the concept by means of a game of trust. the game is played in rounds and involves ten players. the players are given equal amounts of money and asked to contribute some of it to a collective fund. the experimenter explains that in each round the total amount the players contribute to this fund will be doubled and then redistributed equally among them. in the early rounds, most players are quite generous, making substantial contributions to the central fund, in the belief that others will do the same. this, i think, reflects the intuitively optimistic side of human nature. inevitably, however, there are some individuals who hold back and contribute nothing. in basic monetary terms, they see that what profits them most is to keep their share of what is given, without spending any money of their own. such people, i understand, are known in the language of economics as 'free riders.' as a result of their behavior, the other players start to feel they are being taken advantage of, and begin to contribute less and less to the central fund until finally, usually by about the tenth round, the entire system breaks down. at this stage, no one is willing to contribute, even though the experimenter's offer to double any money contributed is still in place. 

at this point the players are introduced to the notion of altruistic punishment, a mechanism by which they can punish the free riders. by contributing some of their own money to a nonrefundable punishment bin, they are able to force free riders to pay double that amount. so, for example, by spending three dollars on punishment, a player can make the free rider pay six dollars. as it turns out, once this system is introduced into the game, cooperation between players can be sustained more of less indefinitely. would-be free riders are deterred from taking advantage of others, and as a result the players continue to contribute to the central fund and everyone benefits. 

although this experiment was principally designed to test a theory in economics, i feel that it also contains a universally applicable message. it shows us that punishment can be exacted in a way that benefits everyone, including wrongdoers themselves. it illustrates the point that punishment which does not exact revenge, but rather corrects the wrongdoer, is in everyone’s interest.”

"in moments of anger or irritation, we may be rude to loved ones or aggressive toward others. later we may feel some remorse or regret, but when looking back on our outburst, we do not fail to distinguish between what we did and who we are. we naturally forgive ourselves and perhaps resolve not to do the same thing again. given that we find it so easy to forgive ourselves, surely we can extend the same courtesy to others! of course not everyone is able to forgive [themself], and this can be an obstacle. for such people, it may be important to practice compassion and forgiveness towards themselves, as the foundation for practicing compassion and forgiveness toward others."

"practicing awareness is not quite the same as listening to your conscience, however. in buddhist ethical theory there is no idea of the conscience as a distinct mental faculty. but being conscientious is still very important. it is described in terms of two key mental mental qualities, namely self-respect and consideration of others.

the first of these, self-respect, relates to having a sense of personal integrity, a self-image as a person who upholds certain values. so when we are tempted to indulge in harmful behavior, our self-image acts as a restraint, as we think 'this is unbecoming of me.' the second mental quality, consideration of others, pertains to having a healthy regard for others' opinions, especially for their potential disapproval. together, these two factors give us an added level of caution about doing wrong which can strengthen our moral compass."

"in the context of secular ethics, perhaps the antidote to destructive emotion with the most urgent and immediate relevance for our everyday lives is what is called soe pa in tibetan. though usually translated as patience, soe pa also includes the virtues of tolerance, forbearance, and forgiveness. what it really means is the ability to endure suffering. it entails not giving in to our instinctive urge to respond negatively to our difficulties. but soe pa has nothing to do with being either passive or impotent. it is not a case of tolerating something just because you do not have the ability to hit back. nor is it enduring injustice grudgingly, through gritted teeth. instead, genuine patience requires great strength. it is fundamentally the exercise of restraint based on mental discipline. there are three aspects of patience, or forbearance, to consider: forbearance toward those who harm us, acceptance of suffering, and acceptance of reality."

"the only effective antidote to greed is moderation and contentment.

of course, in extolling the benefits of simplicity and modesty, i am not suggesting that poverty is acceptable. on the contrary, poverty is a tremendous hardship, one that we must do all we can to end. in addition to making survival a struggle, poverty tends to disempower people and make them feel cowed or demoralized. in these ways, it makes the poor suffer greatly. on the personal level, however, the sooner we accept that riches alone do not bring happiness, and the sooner we learn to live with a sense of modesty, the better off we will be, especially with respect to our happiness. 

time and geography will always impose limits on how much wealth anyone can succeed in accruing in a single lifetime. given this natural limit, it seems wiser to set one's own limits through the exercise of contentment. in contrast, when it comes to acquiring mental riches, the potential is limitless. here, where there is no natural limit, it is appropriate not to be contented with what you have, but to constantly strive for more. unfortunately, most of us do the exact opposite. we are never quite satisfied with what we have materially, but we tend to be thoroughly complacent about our mental riches."

"it is useful to begin by reflecting on the harm we do to ourselves, even physically, when we succumb to temptation and bad habits. then we can also consider the harm that our bad habits inflict on others. it is easy to assume that our personal behavior and habits have no real effect on others, but this is seldom the case. suppose, for example, that one member of a family is addicted to drugs. although, of course, the other family members will not suffer the direct physical and mental ill effects of the drug, this does not mean they will not be harmed. in all likelihood they will be deeply afflicted by worry and concern, as well as by whatever other agonies and complications may accompany the situation. so, when considering the harm we inflict through a lack of self-discipline in our personal habits, we should always be mindful of those who care about our welfare and those whose welfare is intimately connected to our own.

it can also be useful to consider the harmful effects of a lack of self-discipline at a wider social level. in my view the problem of corruption, which is prevalent in so many parts of the world, is actually nothing but a failure of self-discipline. corruption is always a surrender to self-serving attitudes of greed, bias, and dishonesty. even the existence of a fair and just legal system becomes of little value when that system is paralyzed by corruption.

with the awareness that comes from contemplating the consequences of a lack of self-discipline, we can gradually develop a greater ability to resist temptation in our own life. eventually, with sustained practice, self-discipline will start to come naturally and will no longer require conscious effort and willpower. at that point, when restraint and moderation come naturally, we begin to feel the great sense of freedom that comes with self-mastery. this virtue of self-discipline is extolled in all the world's major religious traditions. . .

gaining mastery over our destructive propensities through the exercise of awareness and self-discipline at the levels of body, speech, and mind frees us from the inner turmoil that naturally arises when our behavior is at odds with our ideals. in place of this turmoil come confidence, integrity, and dignity"

"classical buddhist texts describe generosity in terms of four kinds of giving: first, the giving of material goods; second, the giving of freedom from fear, which means offering safety and security to others and dealing with them honestly; third, the giving of spiritual counsel, which entails offering comfort, concern, and advice to support others' psychological and emotional well-being; and fourth, the giving of love.

an important point to recognize at the outset is that the aim of any of these four kinds of giving should never be to ingratiate oneself with others, but should always be to benefit the recipient. if one's motivation is in any way connected to seeking one's own benefit, this is not genuine generosity.

classical buddhist texts also note the need to be discerning when engaging in acts of generosity. for example, in addition to ensuring the soundness of one's motivation, they discuss the need to be aware of specific contexts in which giving might not be appropriate. giving disproportionately, or giving to someone at a wrong time, might do the recipient more harm than good. and clearly there are certain items, such as poisons or weapons, which are, by their very nature, inappropriate for giving. if what we give is likely to be used to harm others, the principle of compassion dictates that we shun giving in that context. furthermore, these texts emphasize the need to be sure we are giving out of respect for the recipient, not out of a sense of superiority. a genuine act of generosity will honor the recipient's dignity."