And it’s about the simple pleasures that keep getting you out of bed every morning. Toast with butter or jam or cream cheese and cucumbers. Simple little things that you know will be there when you wake up. Blankets. Sunlight on Puget Sound. Dew on cedars. Daisies. Somewhere, mountains. Somewhere, the ocean. The consistent things, the old things, like evergreen trees at dusk. – Rachel Corrie: Let Me Stand Alone.
And that’s what it’s all about, really, looking out a window at all the things you can imagine, and being a little terrified, but still looking and planning and staking out a path. – Rachel Corrie: Let Me Stand Alone
As I walk out the door, my reflection flutters up again on its glass surface. Now it wavers. What I mistook for a pear an hour before is only a faltering wraith. The gleaming eyes and jutting cheekbones are all that is left. I want to observe this shadowy parody of me longer: it fascinates me. Drenched in darkness, my face has taken on an enigmatic quality. It is almost beautiful. This reflected ghost does not surprise me; I have seen her before. She gazes down at me from the car window late at night, broken by the harsh glow of an occasional street light. This part of me, a half-hidden, mysterious fairy, is the part I can love. She is completely mine. She is mature and wise and feminine. – Rachel Corrie: Let Me Stand Alone
In the second grade there were classroom rules hanging from the ceiling. The only one I can remember now seems like it would be a good rule for life. “Everyone must feel safe.” Safe to be themselves, physically safe, safe to say what they think, just safe. That’s the best rule I can think of. – Rachel Corrie: Let Me Stand Alone
“Falling in love is totally unimaginable to me. I think maybe the best things often are.”
― Katie Heaney, Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date
When I ride in the dark on stark roads through dry, bald hills, I ache with desperate longing. I don’t know what I am longing for, maybe for some place of my own within these images, some place where I fit, instead of being the one human being still awake, the only thing moving across the hills in arid darkness. Maybe that ache is loneliness. I haven’t found a name for the feeling yet, nor do I know exactly what awakens it in me. But instinct warns me that it is too potent for me, that my soul is on the verge of cracking when I feel it that way. I cannot handle the sheer power of those wild emotions by myself. I have to find some way to share them. That is why I write. It’s instinctive. I just have to – because it is awake like lava in my blood, and sustains me.
Rachel Corrie; Let Me Stand Alone – The Journals of Rachel Corrie
“Falling in love is totally unimaginable to me. I think maybe the best things often are.”
― Katie Heaney, Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date
I feel a bit like Lord Jim today. As I write the sentence I think to myself. I feel like Lord Jim on most days.
Sometimes it is the young Lord Jim. Ready to face the world of adventure. Ready to go out and live the life he has been reading about for years. There is so much life to live inside of me on these days. And these moments feel like the start of something great. It is out there for me to go and get.
Then there are the days I feel like Lord Jim on the run. Life has been rough. I’ve made mistakes. The adventure didn’t measure up and neither did I. I wasn’t the grand hero. I wasn’t the dashing knight. Only a scared little boy, who ran from my own shadow. When the time came for greatness I ran from it. And I run still from this great choice in my past. But I can’t run away.
And then there is the times I feel like Lord Jim at the end. I have found something I believe in. A thing I believe is worth holding on to in this world. I could die for it. But more importantly I live for it every day. I put everything I am into it because I can’t run anymore. And I will never find a home like these moments.
On the hardest days I feel like Lord Jim on his last day. I’ve made a grave error. A sin which much be atoned. I will die for what I have done. Or at least suffer the loss of all I have made. I know the mistake is real. And the sin is mine to own. And the death will be just.
And which Lord Jim do I feel like today. The tired one who can’t seem to stop running. The past trails along behind like a string. I run and I run and I run away. And unlike Lord Jim I don’t even know what I am running from. There is always another port, another life, another story. The next one is always so tempting. The next one is always so tempting. The winds feel like traveling weather today. If I could find a ship going out to sea I might sail away. But, the moment isn’t an escape.
I heard a woman talking recently about her frustration with politics: “We’ve tried so hard, and nothing ever seems to change!” I thought she must be joking.
“Uh, no, we haven’t. How many of us even vote?” I asked her. “And if we do, what does that mean – we go to the voting booth every two or four years? Where do we get off thinking that we’ve tried so hard?” Are we thinking we made some supreme and noble effort to change the world, and it didn’t work? We’ve been trained by thirty-minute sitcoms that if we don’t get what we want in half and hour, it’s like, uh-oh, we tried but failed. Too bad. It’s over. Next.
The Gift of Change, Marianne Williamson
With the slightest willingness, you will receive change. Today you have two choices where forgiveness is concerned. One, continue to be angry and miserable, or two, forgive, let go and be happy. Forgiveness leads to joy and peace of mind. The joy may come right away as an overwhelming feeling of relief or a moment of compassion and genuine love. – Add More Ing to Your Life, Gabrielle Bernstein