We talk a lot, in feminist communities, about abuse. And we talk a lot about how oppression can warp your understanding of self, about how some people raised in an oppressive system will internalize that system. We talk about how people who are victims of abuse often perpetrate it. I just don’t think we were prepared to see that play itself out on Mad Men. We wanted Betty to read The Feminine Mystique and get her mind blown and rise above; or, we wanted her to stay a victim, so we could relate to her better, or at least keep feeling sorry for her. But sometimes, people just get damaged until they start damaging. Sometimes, people are lost. We hate Betty now because she’s not going to stay a victim, but the truth is, she’s also not going to be saved.
For a moment he hesitated as if debating whether a kind lie were kinder in the long run than the truth. Then he shrugged.
“Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken — and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived. Perhaps, if I were younger —” he sighed. “But I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over. I’m too old to shoulder the burden of constant lies that go with living in polite disillusionment. I couldn’t live with you and lie to you and I certainly couldn’t lie to myself. I can’t even lie to you now. I wish I could care what you do or where you go, but I can’t.”
He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly:
you were like an ulcer on the inside of my cheek that my tongue could not stop touching. loving you was like watching a stranger clean a week old wound; i felt sick, but i wanted more.
and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.
So wherever you are, I hope you’re happy, I really do. I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight. I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking. I hope your lungs are open and breathing your life. I hope there’s a kite in your hand that’s flying all the way up to Orion and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out. I hope you’re smiling like god is pulling at the corners of your mouth. ‘Cause I might be naked and lonely, shaking branches for bones, but I’m still time zones away from who I was the day before we met. You were the first mile where my heart broke a sweat. And I wish you were here I wish you’d never left.
Sometimes as I am falling asleep in a dark, quiet room I have for a moment a great and treasurable illusion of the past. The wall of a tent leans up over my face, not visible but audible, a slanting plane of faint sound: the susurrus of blown snow. Nothing can be seen. The light-emission of the Chabe stove is cut off, and it exists only as a sphere of heat, a heart of warmth. The faint dampness and confining cling of my sleeping-bag; the sound of the snow, barely audible, Estraven’s breathing as he sleeps; darkness. Nothing else. We are inside, the two of us, in shelter, at rest, at the center of all things. Outside, as always, lies the great darkness, the cold, death’s solitude.
In such fortunate moments as I fall asleep I know beyond doubt what the real center of my own life is, that time that is past and lost and yet is permanent, the enduring moment, the heart of warmth.
I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
The Agricola (written ca. 98) recounts the life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, an eminent Roman general and Tacitus' father-in-law; it also covers, briefly, the geography andethnography of ancient Britain. As in the Germania, Tacitus favorably contrasts the liberty of the native Britons with the tyranny and corruption of the Empire; the book also contains eloquent polemics against the greed of Rome, one of which, that Tacitus claims is from a speech by Calgacus, ends by asserting that Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. (To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. — Oxford Revised Translation).
War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
"Don't kill me," said the knight. "I yield. I yield. You can't kill a man at mercy."
Lancelot put up his sword and went back from the knight, as if he were going back from his own soul. He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.
"Get up," he said. "I won't hurt you. Get up, go."
The knight looked at him, on all fours like a dog, and stood up, crouching uncertainly.
She was not moping for Lancelot, nor did she weep for him on her pillow. She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.
there are many words for transformation / metamorphosis metaphor / medication / go to sleep / beside the man you love & wake up next to a dog / maybe the moon brought it out of him hound hungry for blood / maybe it’s your fault / or maybe it was there inside him / howling all along
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Date: 2012-07-20 12:49 am (UTC)No-One's Ever On Your Side.
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Date: 2012-07-25 01:37 am (UTC)“Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken — and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived. Perhaps, if I were younger —” he sighed. “But I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over. I’m too old to shoulder the burden of constant lies that go with living in polite disillusionment. I couldn’t live with you and lie to you and I certainly couldn’t lie to myself. I can’t even lie to you now. I wish I could care what you do or where you go, but I can’t.”
He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly:
“My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell.
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Date: 2012-08-16 12:50 am (UTC)Robert Fulghum.
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Date: 2012-09-09 07:49 pm (UTC)that my tongue could not stop touching.
loving you was like watching a stranger clean
a week old wound;
i felt sick, but i wanted more.
warsan shire.
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Date: 2012-09-09 07:52 pm (UTC)Ulysses, James Joyce.
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Date: 2012-09-09 07:53 pm (UTC)may I have that, is how every love letter can be summarized.
“Past-Perfect-Impersonal," Russell Dillon.
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Date: 2013-02-15 11:55 pm (UTC)--You know me. I'm the same as you. It's two in the morning and I don't know nobody.
The Sting (1973).
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Date: 2013-02-15 11:59 pm (UTC)The Gift of an Enemy, Sylvia.
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Date: 2013-02-15 11:59 pm (UTC)North & South, 2004.
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Date: 2013-02-15 11:59 pm (UTC)The Looking Glass War, John le Carre
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Date: 2013-02-16 12:00 am (UTC)Great Expectations, Charles Dickens.
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Date: 2013-02-17 08:51 pm (UTC)Great Expectations, Charles Dickens.
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Date: 2013-05-05 10:59 pm (UTC)You used to love me,
and now you’re a stranger
who happens to know all
of my secrets.
Clementine von Radics.
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Date: 2013-05-11 05:38 pm (UTC)it will rise in perfect light.
i have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.
“the old astronomer” - sarah williams
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Date: 2013-05-12 03:09 pm (UTC)I really do.
I hope the stars are kissing your cheeks tonight.
I hope you finally found a way to quit smoking.
I hope your lungs are open and breathing your life.
I hope there’s a kite in your hand
that’s flying all the way up to Orion
and you still got a thousand yards of string to let out.
I hope you’re smiling
like god is pulling at the corners of your mouth.
‘Cause I might be naked and lonely,
shaking branches for bones,
but I’m still time zones away
from who I was the day before we met.
You were the first mile
where my heart broke a sweat.
And I wish you were here
I wish you’d never left.
Andrea Gibson
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Date: 2016-08-07 06:46 pm (UTC)Carl Sagan
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Date: 2016-09-30 01:38 am (UTC)In such fortunate moments as I fall asleep I know beyond doubt what the real center of my own life is, that time that is past and lost and yet is permanent, the enduring moment, the heart of warmth.
I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin.
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Date: 2016-10-21 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-22 10:34 pm (UTC)The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien.
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Date: 2017-05-03 01:21 am (UTC)Lancelot put up his sword and went back from the knight, as if he were going back from his own soul. He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.
"Get up," he said. "I won't hurt you. Get up, go."
The knight looked at him, on all fours like a dog, and stood up, crouching uncertainly.
Lancelot went away and was sick.
The Once and Future King, T.H. White.
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Date: 2017-05-03 01:23 am (UTC)The Once and Future King, T.H. White.
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Date: 2017-05-23 04:58 pm (UTC)there are many words for transformation / metamorphosis
metaphor / medication / go to sleep / beside the man you love
& wake up next to a dog / maybe the moon brought it out of him
hound hungry for blood / maybe it’s your fault / or maybe
it was there inside him / howling all along
"Bestiary," Sam Sax.