Rosa: How Do I Explain?

Friday, February 20, 2009

How Do I Explain?

Mac Photo Booth Mirror Image photo
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

This photo came about while I was messing with the effects section in my Mac's Photo Booth application. You're looking at my ear, the lamp above the couch, and my pink and white iTunes gift card (one of my workout rewards.)

Trust me, I'm as disturbed by this photo as you are.

Waiting

I used to wait tables for a living. (It was my first job after high school.) I hated it. Hated hated hated it. And then I did it for, like, five years. Every once in a while I have a waiting tables nightmare. Awful. I had one last night that woke me up it was so awful.

Bits & Pieces

In an effort to keep my gym workouts from becoming too tedious, I've been trying to incorporate new stuff. This week, I've added a bit of the ol' Stairmaster to my cardio routine. I have to tell you that I have this insane phobia about climbing stairs. It developed after this woman in one of my classes at school told me about the time she saw someone trip going up stairs. The poor woman fell, hit her chin on the step and bit through her own lip so that her teeth were stuck through her lip. They were actually stuck through the lip. If that isn't a reason to rid the world of stairs, I don't know what is. So, StairMaster it is! I don't know if I'm sweating because I'm picturing myself having to pull my bloodied lip off my own teeth after I trip and fall or if I'm sweating because it's a difficult workout. Either way, I'm sweating, right?

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Then, enormous demons did battle inside me. I did not understand they were there to save me. Not yet.--Maureen Ryan

"What is truth? Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go." --Meister Eckhart

"...knowledge rips open the world. Knowledge comes with risk. When they say the truth sets you free, what they don’t tell you is that the freedom comes because the truth lit the match and burned down your home." --Lyz Lenz

“Whatever it is, I’m against it,/ I don’t know what they have to say / It makes no difference anyway.” Groucho Marx Horse Feathers (1932)

You are the sky. Everything else – it's just the weather. --Pema Chödrön

Joan Didion wrote, “We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”
Because sometimes darkness closes around you
and you remind yourself that it’s all right,
you’ve worn this cloak before.

-
Why You Might Be a Witch
Theodora Goss

"When you’re true to yourself, you win in the end." —Chavela Vargas

“What you remember seems forever.”--Robert Penn Warren

"I am unable to describe exactly what is the matter with me. Now and then there are horrible fits of anxiety, apparently without cause, or otherwise a feeling of emptiness and fatigue in the head... at times I have attacks of melancholy and of atrocious remorse." --Vincent Van Gogh

Years ago, I told myself that one day I would stop feeling this quiet but abiding rage about the things I have been through at the hands of others. I would wake up and there would be no more flashbacks. That day never came, or it hasn’t come, and I am no longer waiting for it.--Roxane Gay

"For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered." --Harlan Ellison

"I think that the dying pray at the last not 'please' but 'thank you' as a guest thanks his host at the door." --Annie Dillard

“If my life wasn’t funny, it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.”

--Carrie Fisher

The banana split is very dear to the heart of British diners of a certain age. It evokes memories of 70s and 80s childhood largesse. It should, by unwritten culinary law, involve a banana, cream and ice-cream, yes, but more than this: sprinkles, and drizzled sauces in raspberry and chocolate flavours. I will accept a glacé cherry. If you have a sparkler, I want that sparkler lit. I don’t care if Aunty Sheila loses an eyebrow: this is about me. The Bodean’s banana split is a passive-aggressive act. It’s what you give a bad child on their birthday if they have recently drop-kicked a guinea pig. It’s just a banana covered with squirty cream. While Instagram rocks with freakshakes and bespoke cronut-duffins catering to a Bake-Off showstopper-spoiled audience, over at Bodeans they’ve created the perfect post-Brexit banana split. It’s 1944 again and we should just be excited to see a real-life banana.--grace dent, restaurant reviewer

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you.
--Bjork, "Hyperballad"

anger first, then never-ending sadness--Samantha Sparks

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”
― Josephine_Hart

I work very hard and I never - never! get people to understand what I mean.

Louise Bourgeois

WAIT

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Galway Kinnell (February 1, 1927–October 28, 2014)

"You know what would be so cool? To get to the end of my personality and just, like, lay in the sun.”--Carrie Fisher

"Truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity."--A. Rich

“The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.”--Sherwood Anderson

"You can't do everything. It's impossible. Something has to give. And sometimes it's you." --Iris Apfel

"I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence. Every sort of thing happened, at home and outside, every day."--Elena Ferrante

"What we’ve been seeing in my lab, over and over again, is that people have an inability to predict what will make us happy — or unhappy. If you can’t tell which futures are better than others, it’s hard to find happiness. The truth is, bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things, too. We adapt very quickly to either.

So the good news is that going blind is not going to make you as unhappy as you think it will. The bad news is that winning the lottery will not make you as happy as you expect."--Daniel Gilbert

I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me. ~ Philip Larkin

“We’re not protecting kids when we keep them from stories that shine a light in the darker corners of their lives. We’re just leaving them alone in the dark.”--Kate Messner

There is no one thing that's true. It's all true. --Hemingway

"The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and to have courage when things go wrong."--Laura Ingalls Wilder

There’s a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don’t lose courage. You’ve already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don’t lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer - or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive.--Elie Wiesel

What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?
--Audre Lorde

By the time I am 25, I carry a feeling in my blood that something is very wrong; something has been done to me, but the words never seem to find my consciousness. All I have as confirmation is a deep, dark terror I try to slough off, but can never quite shake it.--Oriana Koren

Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not part of us, while self-esteem derives from the potentialities and achievements of self. We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body of possessions. There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is insensitive and uncompromising. The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection.--Bruce Lee

Do you know what they are? Deluded. People who are living under the delusion that their work is separate from their identity and experience are generally people who are benefiting from enormous amounts of structural privilege.--Grace Dunham

Buber said to Clare, “You are right, that the time between creative hours can be very long, but they do come, and I hope that when one comes, your realism will not make you miss it." HARRIS WOFFORD

"The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t." --Marcus Aurelius

"I never talk about sex. I think it’s bad enough to have your own sex life without having to worry about other people’s."--Fran Lebowitz

"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth."--Pema Chodron

"It may not have been fun, but it was the next best thing: It was scary. That makes you grow. Besides, I'm not short on happiness in my life." --Sarah Silverman

"Americans like to talk about fighting for peace. That doesn't make sense."--Scarlett Rouge

"Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains and sequestered vales. And they watch in the tenderest affection over the lonely hearted living and often return to visit and comfort them."--Chief Seattle

"Writing at best is a lonely life." --Ernest Hemingway

"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better." --Anne Lamott

"No black woman writer in this culture can write 'too much.' Indeed, no woman writer can write 'too much'. . . No woman has ever written enough." --bell hooks

“Courage is[. . .]knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”--Harper Lee

"If you think you're spiritually enlightened, go home for Thanksgiving." --Ram Dass

"Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action'.”--Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

"The only emotion you can have in patriarchy is fear." --John Bradshaw

When one does what Buddhas do, one is a Buddha.
When one does what Bodhisattvas do, one is a Bodhisattva.
When one does what Arhats do, one is an Arhat.
When one does what ghosts do, one is a ghost.
These are all natural phenomena.
There are no shortcuts in cultivation.

--Master Hsuan Hua

A poem by James Tate:

Goodtime Jesus

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey. I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

I asked Evgeny to help me with this sad job. We covered him with snow and rocks [...] This last respect was for a man I feel was the best and brightest expression of the American persona. I think often of his brilliant smile and positive manner. I am a difficult man and I hope to remember him always by living a little more by his example. --Anatoli Boukreev

"You're treated like other humans, so stop with the angst." --Batou, from 攻殻機動隊, Kōkaku Kidōtai, Ghost in the Shell

"...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it."--Flannery O'Connor

"We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth."--Ray Bradbury

"I am not a mystic and I do not lead a holy life. Not that I can claim any interesting or pleasurable sins (my sense of the devil is strong) but I know all about the garden variety, pride, gluttony, envy and sloth, and what is more to the point, my virtues are as timid as my vices. I think sin occasionally brings one closer to God, but not habitual sin and not this petty kind that blocks every small good. A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him."--Flannery O'Connor

There is a German proverb: “Der Teufel scheisst immer auf den grössten Haufen” [“The Devil always shits on the biggest heap”]... Prepare yourself: there is never a day without a sucker punch. At the same time, be pragmatic and learn how to develop an understanding of when to abandon an idea. Follow your dreams no matter what, but reconsider if they can’t be realized in certain situations. A project can become a cul-de-sac and your life might slip through your fingers in pursuit of something that can never be realized. Know when to walk away.--Werner Herzog

"If [other people] hadn’t made me cry, I wouldn’t be able to cry on cue now.... If they hadn’t told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if they hadn’t tried to break me down, I wouldn’t know that I’m unbreakable."

--Gabourey Sidibe

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement."

--Mary Oliver

Chogyam Trungpa: “The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hold on to, no parachute. The good news is, there is no ground.”

"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I often hear voices...If you believe, as I do, that the mind wants to heal itself, and the psyche seeks coherence not disintegration, then it isn't hard to conclude that the mind will manifest whatever is necessary to work on the job...Going mad is the beginning of the process. It is not supposed to be the end result."

--Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

"This can be anything you want." --Louis C.K.

Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.--Joseph Wood Krutch

"I did the right thing and I am not going to apologize for it." --Grace and Frankie

The weather was warm, I was in a car with a piece of pizza and a little to-go cup of wine, and Mariah Carey’s Christmas album was playing. It was beautiful. I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier.
--Jenna Wortham

Go where the search takes you.

Original: 子曰：“吾十有五而志于学，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命，六十而耳顺，七十而从心所欲，不逾矩。”

English: Confucius said:”When I was fifteen, I aspired to learn. At thirty, I could be independent. At forty, I am not deluded. At fifty, I knew my destiny. At sixty, I knew truth in all I heard. At seventy, I could follow my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.”

There's a point when you go with what you've got. Or you don't go.--Joan Didion

"I am not an American. I am the American."

--Mark Twain

"There's a lot of ego, greed, stupidity, and insanity. And that's a really bad combination." --Matt Groening

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.”
— Martin Luther

Love casts out fear.

Fail. Fail again. Fail better. --Samuel Beckett

"...so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave." --Cheryl Strayed

"As much as anything, I miss being insulted every now and then, which is probably the Virginian in me."--Richard E. Byrd

"Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini."--Paul Muldoon

"Art is the only way I know to heal from the inside, to see the world for what it really is, beautiful and bright."--Danny Gregory

"Love is bigger than being satiated by happiness. --Derek Cianfrance

"You can change your circumstances by changing your attitude."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

"Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see." --Paul Klee

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

--Michael Jordan

“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”

--Adrienne Rich

“If you’re not sure you could love your children, please don’t have them, because they might grow up and kill us.”--John Waters

'There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any time."--Hunter S. Thompson