āI just know that whenever Iām at my most distracted or stressed out, if I can make just a little time to scratch a few things down, I always feel better afterward. Because my feelings will have been held for a moment, captured and examined, seen in a new light. Writing allows us to see ourselves when we most feel lost or consumed by the world.ā
-Jami Attenberg
I have this quote taped to the inside of my journal and it has been revolutionary to my mindset and motivation.
Thank you for bringing this around again! I copied it out when I read it but itās a great idea to put it inside the journal cover to read it again and again. This was particularly brilliant, Jami.
Both of mine come from Tim O'Brien's brilliant book "The Things They Carried":
āStories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.ā
ā Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
āThe thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.ā
Mine are the opening sentences of Mrs. Dalloway that show me how to push back and be alive. āMrs. Dalloway said sheād buy the flowers herself. What a lark! What a plunge!
that first one of yours is definitely one of mine! that book absolutely upended me the first time I read it and it has continued to do so every time I go back to it.
āArt should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.ā ~ Mexican poet Cesar A. Cruz
AND
āOne of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.ā ~ Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
I read this quote over the weekend from Celine Nguyenās blog, written by Harmut Rosa, which absolutely blew me away:
The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ā modernā is the idea, the hope and desire, that we can make the world controllable. Yet it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world. Only then do we feel touched, moved, alive. A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead worldā¦Our lives unfold as the interplay between what we can control and that which remains outside our control, yet concerns us in some way. Life happens, as it were, on the borderline.
Beautiful spaciousness in the art photos and in your words. Carson McCullers really kills me! She was unbelievable. The one of hers that always plays in my head (especially in summer) is "āIt happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person and hung around in doorways, and she was afraid.ā Also Faulkner "How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant" (As I Lay Dying).
Just commenting to say thank you for your optimism and positive attitude!
I have this quote written on a post-it note floating around my desk drawer: "All you have to be is curious and kind." I don't know who said it or where I read it or what it was about, but I feel like it is truly applicable to every aspect of life. No matter what, judge less, ask questions, and meet people where they are.
"I think nothing else returns me to my adolescent self in the way that writing does. I love it, I hate it, Iām in despair, Iām obsessed, I feel, deliciously, that marvelous things might be possible. It doesnāt sound very healthy, does it? But it is energizing." - Kelly Link
the sentence I havenāt been able to get out of my head since reading it comes from garth greenwellās most recent novel, SMALL RAIN:
āwhy do we love what we love, why does so much fail to move us, why does so much pass by us unloved.ā
itās life-changing because it asks the questions that haunt me, and in that haunting I become attuned to a ādifferent frequency of existenceāāand within that frequency my attention becomes focused. I am able to extend love beyond what I thought. I am able to be moved beyond what I thought.
āBe patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.ā
āI just know that whenever Iām at my most distracted or stressed out, if I can make just a little time to scratch a few things down, I always feel better afterward. Because my feelings will have been held for a moment, captured and examined, seen in a new light. Writing allows us to see ourselves when we most feel lost or consumed by the world.ā
-Jami Attenberg
I have this quote taped to the inside of my journal and it has been revolutionary to my mindset and motivation.
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Oooo! I am going to do the same thing!
Thank you for bringing this around again! I copied it out when I read it but itās a great idea to put it inside the journal cover to read it again and again. This was particularly brilliant, Jami.
Oh, I love this quote! Thank you for sharing it!
Both of mine come from Tim O'Brien's brilliant book "The Things They Carried":
āStories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.ā
ā Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
āThe thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.ā
ā Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Mine are the opening sentences of Mrs. Dalloway that show me how to push back and be alive. āMrs. Dalloway said sheād buy the flowers herself. What a lark! What a plunge!
that first one of yours is definitely one of mine! that book absolutely upended me the first time I read it and it has continued to do so every time I go back to it.
"Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells." - Seamus Heaney
Two sayings that shaped me come to mind:
āArt should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.ā ~ Mexican poet Cesar A. Cruz
AND
āOne of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.ā ~ Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
This well-known line from a Robert Lowell poem has forced me to cross out and re-write many a line:
"Yet why not say what happened?"
I read this quote over the weekend from Celine Nguyenās blog, written by Harmut Rosa, which absolutely blew me away:
The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ā modernā is the idea, the hope and desire, that we can make the world controllable. Yet it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world. Only then do we feel touched, moved, alive. A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead worldā¦Our lives unfold as the interplay between what we can control and that which remains outside our control, yet concerns us in some way. Life happens, as it were, on the borderline.
"I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph" - Jack Gilbert, Failing and Flying
Wow! Just Wow! Thank you, Jami! I needed this todayāboth the dose of visual art and the literary offer ā and especially Adaās Poem!!
Inspirational on every front.
Keep up the great work!
Linda
Beautiful spaciousness in the art photos and in your words. Carson McCullers really kills me! She was unbelievable. The one of hers that always plays in my head (especially in summer) is "āIt happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person and hung around in doorways, and she was afraid.ā Also Faulkner "How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant" (As I Lay Dying).
Just commenting to say thank you for your optimism and positive attitude!
I have this quote written on a post-it note floating around my desk drawer: "All you have to be is curious and kind." I don't know who said it or where I read it or what it was about, but I feel like it is truly applicable to every aspect of life. No matter what, judge less, ask questions, and meet people where they are.
Thank you, Jami! Literally moved to tears by these words. Stay safe, everyone.
"I think nothing else returns me to my adolescent self in the way that writing does. I love it, I hate it, Iām in despair, Iām obsessed, I feel, deliciously, that marvelous things might be possible. It doesnāt sound very healthy, does it? But it is energizing." - Kelly Link
the sentence I havenāt been able to get out of my head since reading it comes from garth greenwellās most recent novel, SMALL RAIN:
āwhy do we love what we love, why does so much fail to move us, why does so much pass by us unloved.ā
itās life-changing because it asks the questions that haunt me, and in that haunting I become attuned to a ādifferent frequency of existenceāāand within that frequency my attention becomes focused. I am able to extend love beyond what I thought. I am able to be moved beyond what I thought.
I am able to pay attention.
āBe patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.ā
Rainer Maria Rilke
I have long relied on that well-expressed thought to see me through tough times.
But I have since also learned to ask this: Is it that you do not know or that you are afraid to acknowledge what you know?
"Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no truth to tell.ā
āā Elena Ferrante
Mine are:
"I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be" ā Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem
"Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me." ā Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches