Thursday, June 9, 2016
Mourning Diary - Pg 233
Each time I dream about her (and I dream only of her), it is in order to see her, believe her to be alive, but other, separate.
Mourning Diary - Pg 226
Maman's photo as a little girl, in the distance—in front of me on my desk. It was enough for me to look at it, to apprehend the suchness of her being (which I struggle to describe) in order to be reinvested by, immersed in, invaded, inundated by her goodness.
Mourning Diary - Pg 206
The day of the anniversary of maman's death is approaching. I fear, increasingly, as if on this day (October 25) she will have to die a second time.
Mourning Diary - Pg 183
"Beauty is not like a superlative of what we imagine, a sort of abstract type we have before our eyes, but on the contrary a new, unimaginable type that reality affords us."
[Similarly: my suffering is not like the superlative of pain, of abandonment, etc., a sort of abstract type (which could be recovered by metalanguage), but on the contrary a new type, etc.]
Mourning Diary - Pg 181
Exploration of my (apparently vital) need of solitude: and yet I have a (no less vital) need of my friends.
I must therefore: 1) force myself to "call" them from time to time, find the energy to do so, combat my—telephonic (among other kinds)—apathy; 2) ask them to understand that above all they must let me call them. If they less often, less systematically, got in touch with me, that would mean for me that I must get in touch with them.
Mourning Diary - Pg 177
Which is what literature is: that I cannot read without pain, without choking on truth.
Mourning Diary - Pg 175
The very fact that language affords me the word "intolerable" immediately achieves a certain tolerance.
Mourning Diary - Pg 173
I live in my suffering and that makes me happy.
Anything that keeps me from living in my suffering is unbearable to me.
Mourning Diary - Pg 170
Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wail till the incomprehensible power (...) that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.
-Marcel Proust
Mourning Diary - Pg 159
Seeing the swallows flying through the summer evening air, I tell myself, thinking painfully of maman: how barbarous not to believe in souls—in the immortality of souls! the idiotic truth of materialism!
Mourning Diary - Pg 158
Leaving the apartment for the trip to Morocco, I remove the flower left on the spot where maman was ill—and once again the horrible fear (of her death) overwhelms me: cf. Winnicott: how true: the fear of what has happened. But stranger still: and cannot recur. Which is the very definition of the defnitive.
Mourning Diary - Pg 135
By love FW is ravaged, suffers, remains prostrated, inattentive to all demands, etc. Yet he has lost no one. The being whom he loves continues to live, etc. And I, beside him, listening to him, apparently calm, attentive, present, as if something infinitely more serious had not occurred to me.
Mourning Diary - Pg 127
From the terrace of the Flore, I see a woman sitting on the windowsill of the bookstore La Hune; she is holding a glass in one hand, apparently bored; the whole room behind her is filled with men, their backs to me. A cocktail party.
May cocktails. A sad, depressing sensation of a seasonal and social stereotype.
Mourning Diary - Pg 126
Like love, mourning affects the world—and the worldly—with unreality, with importunity. I resist the world, I suffer from what it demands of me, from its demands. The world increases my sadness, my dryness, my confusion, my irritation, etc. The world depresses me.
Mourning Diary - Pg 119
To think, to know that maman is dead forever, completely ("completely," which is inconceivable without violence and without one's being able to abide by such a thought at length), is to think, letter by letter (literally, and simultaneously), that I too will die forever and completely.
There is then, in mourning (in this kind of mourning, which is mine), a radical and new domestication of death; for previously, it was only a borrowed knowledge (clumsy, had from others, from philosophy, etc.),but now it is my knowledge. It can hardly do me any more harm than my mourning.
Mourning Diary - Pg 117
The more the world tells me, "You have everything here by which to forget," the less I forget.
Mourning Diary - Pg 113
Written to be remembered? Not to remind myself, but to oppose the laceration of forgetting as it reveals its absolute nature. The—prompt—"no trace remaining," anywhere, in anyone.
Necessity of the "Monument."
Memento illam vixisse.
Mourning Diary - Pg 100
M. and I feel that paradoxically (since people usually say: Work, amuse yourself, see friends) it's when we're busy, distracted, sought out, exteriorized, that we suffer most. Inwardness, calm, solitude make us less miserable.
Mourning Diary - Pg 96
I had thought that maman's death would make me someone "strong," acceding as I might to worldly indifference. But it has been quite the contrary: I am even more fragile (unsurprisingly: for no reason, a state of abandon).
Mourning Diary - Pg 68
To whom could I put this question (with any hope of an answer)?
Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought...?
Mourning Diary - Pg 52
Now, everywhere, in the street, the café, I see each individual under the aspect of ineluctably having-to-die, which is exactly what it means to be mortal.—And no less obviously, I see them as not knowing this to be so.
Mourning Diary - Pg 51
I am either lacerated or ill at ease
and occasionally subject to gusts of life
Mourning Diary - Pg 50
There is a time when death is an event, an ad-venture, and as such mobilizes, interests, activates, tetanizes. And then one day it is no longer an event, it is another duration, compressed, insignificant, not narrated, grim, without recourse: true mourning not susceptible to any narrative dialectic.
Mourning Diary - Pg 43
Embarrassed and almost guilty because sometimes I feel that my mourning is merely a susceptibility to emotion.
But all my life haven't I been just that: moved?
Mourning Diary - Pg 41
People tell you to keep your "courage" up. But the time for courage is when she was sick, when I took care of her and saw her suffering, her sadness, and when I had to conceal my tears. Constantly one had to make a decision, put on a mask, and that was courage.
—Now, courage means the will to live and there's all too much of that.
Mourning Diary - Pg 37
That's how I can grasp my mourning.
Not directly in solitude, empirically, etc.; I seem to have a kind of ease, of control that makes people think I'm suffering less than they would have imagined. But it comes over me when our love for each other is torn apart once again. The most painful point at the most abstract moment...
Mourning Diary - Pg 30
What's remarkable about these notes is a devastated subject being the victim of presence of mind.
Mourning Diary - Pg 21
...that this death fails to destroy me altogether means that I want to live wildly, madly, and that therefore the fear of my own death is always there, not displaced by a single inch.
Mourning Diary - Pg 18
The desires I had before her death (while she was sick) can no longer be fulfilled, for that would mean it is her death that allows me to fulfill them—her death might be a liberation in some sense with regard to my desires. But her death has changed me, I no longer desire what I used to desire. I must wait—supposing that such a thing could happen—for a new desire to form, a desire following her death.
Mourning Diary - Pg 14
How strange: her voice, which I knew so well, and which is said to be the very texture of memory ("the dear inflection..."), I no longer hear. Like a localized deafness...
Mourning Diary - Pg 6
As soon as someone dies, frenzied construction of the future (shifting furniture, etc.):futuromania.
Mourning Diary - Pg 5
Every morning, around 6:30, in the darkness outside, the metallic racket of the garbage cans.
She would say with relief: the night is finally over (she suffered during the night, alone, a cruel business).
Last Call - Pg 163
Worship leaders should be like the finger pointing to the moon. No one should be looking at the finger. They should be trying to find the moon.
Last Call - Pg 155
Everything we do is based around one question: Does this word/action/thought bring more love or less love into the world? In short, does it make us better disciples?
Last Call - Pg 152
We understand forgiveness—kind of. Someone says they are sorry, and we forgive them—end of story. Grace is a whole other beast. Grace says, "I know you don't deserve to be forgiven. Hell, you ain't even asked to be forgiven. You know what? You are forgiven anyway."
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Last Call - Pg 148
They are a lot of guys who look probably like the picture in your head: unkempt, dirty, dressed in old clothes, and in some cases, smelly. You know, the kingdom of God.
Last Call - Pg 145
I always struggle with faith communities that say being with the poor isn't their thing. I think we are all different, and different churches emphasize different things. Depending on our context and the people we serve, it is going to look different for everybody. But Jesus did not make caring for the poor optional, and to see serving the poor as just a "spoke in the wheel" of being a Christian and a follower of Jesus? I have to call that bullshit.
Last Call - Pg 144
It is often so easy to lump the poor and homeless all together, as if there is a step-by-step instruction booklet on how to end up homeless. Step 1: Use up all your resources. Step 2: Develop an active addiction. Step 3: Become unemployable. Step 4: Lose your shit.
It simply doesn't work that way.
Last Call - Pg 144
The folks in the park—our "friends without homes" as we call them, because that's all they really are—have the same problems. They just exert a lot less energy pretending they don't. It is like all that effort to put up a facade got too exhausting and they said, "Screw it. I'm a mess. Moving on." That is refreshing.
Last Call - Pg 139
I am stunned by how often I see "God stuff" happening all around me. I have a hard time thinking it just started showing up. There was a shift. I think that shift happened the second I started actually looking around and watching for it. When I did, I realized it was everywhere.
Last Call - Pg 125
I think Jesus was fun! At the very least, he wasn't against it. Hell, his first miracle was turning water into wine. How totally badass is that? And not some generic box wine or two-buck chuck. Jesus turned the wine into awesome, killer Brunello di Montalcino! 2006!
Last Call - Pg 125
I think Jesus was a badass. He was a charming, likable, passionate badass who fought for the underdog and made everybody feel welcome—especially those who no one else accepts. We all have known that guy. The guy who never started a fight but would never back down from one either, especially if he felt someone was taking advantage of someone who couldn't fight back. We all dig those people. We all want to be those people—the doers of good, the defenders of justice. We need superhero Jesus.
Last Call - Pg 117
I am continuing to do this minute by minute. To this day, I am still not sure what the potter has in store. I hope it's a killer vase or a really badass bowl. I just don't want to be a crappy ashtray.
Last Call - Pg 116
I have realized that through the years I have slowly but surely let the world squelch my joy and happiness. I have too often tried to be cool at the cost of silliness and fun. I have too often reached yet again for a black shirt when a pink one would have been fun. That sucks.
Last Call - Pg 115
Anyone who has gone to college or celebrated St. Patrick's Day knows that a nine a.m. drunk is not an impossibility! God did make Bloody Marys and mimosas.
Last Call - Pg 111
I find myself asking if we have made it easier to call ourselves followers just so we can say we have more people on the team.
There is a part of me that wants a smaller team—but one that's more badass, more over-the-top committed to doing our damnedest to live like Christ and not really caring if others join us. That would probably be a pretty small group. But as long as there is a desire to go out there and love, really love, then everyone is welcome on the team. We'd be like ninjas for Jesus, going out and doing radical special-ops-type acts of love and compassion. Rogue disciples, coming together to do extraordinary acts of grace and kindness—how killer would that be? I can tell you exactly how killer that would be.
Pretty damn killer.
Last Call - Pg 109
If I like the blues but country does nothing for me, does that mean I don't love music? Does it mean I hate tradition? Does it mean I am attacking music? No. It means I have a deep, strong, true desire to connect with music, but in a certain form.
Last Call - Pg 104
I remember moments at St. Andrew when there wasn't enough money to help people who came to our door because we simply did not allocate enough money to outreach—and at the same time there were $10,000 pieces of art in our entryway. It is heartbreaking to know we can't help a family that is struggling, but we have multiple baby grand pianos. There is no question that affluent churches do a lot of good. It is rarely about one instance; it is a constant monitoring. When buildings get built and Jumbotron screens get hung while people lose their jobs, benefits get cut, and furlough days get enacted, something is wrong. If we are spending more money on sheet music than outreach, something ain't right.
Last Call - Pg 101
If we don't know whom to love, it's a simple test: Is anybody else loving that person? No? Then that's the one!
Last Call - Pg 99
It is not the service of worship that pulls them in, but the service of people. And it is not "works that get you into heaven" thinking that is pulling them there. Most of our folks believe in a God of such unspeakable grace that we are all okay on that front.
Last Call - Pg 99
And saying you love people is not the same as getting out there and actually loving people.
Last Call - Pg 97
What the hell? We think it's important to create disciples of Jesus Christ—we just don't think that the things Jesus thought were important are important. That's like saying you want to learn to swim, but you don't want to get wet. You want to get a college degree, but you don't want to go to school. You want to lose weight, but you don't want to diet or exercise.
Last Call - Pg 91
People look down on them and damn near spit on them as they walk by, yet many of the homeless folks that I know are the most upbeat, kind, compassionate, loving people I have ever known. They just haven't mastered that whole rent/mortgage thing.
Last Call - Pg 91
Besides, a lot of the people who look like they've got it all together don't really, and a lot of the people whose lives are a mess on the outside have got some things figured out that a lot of people don't.
Last Call - Pg 89
I was worried I would never be taken seriously. (Granted, an odd concern for a comedian, but not so odd for a student.)
Last Call - Pg 88
A number of students at Iliff didn't even wear shoes. When they did, they would kick them off as soon as they sat down at their desks. While I was always (and continue to be) proud of my socks, I would never dream of doing this.
Last Call - Pg 84
It was the date that the prison ministry team would be making its monthly visit to the local correctional facility. She said it would be good practice for ministry. I don't know what sort of "practice" I was going to get, or how violent the churches in Colorado were, but she did have a point—sort of.
Last Call - Pg 84
That small, naive voice that is inside all of us but is not to be confused with God. That's a still, quiet voice. Very similar. This voice tells you stupid crap that you know deep down is wrong but you want to believe anyway.
Last Call - Pg 82
If you have to change a significant portion of who you are to make it fit, I think you are trying too hard.
Last Call - Pg 81
I wasn't going to pretend. I was going to bring my whole self to the ordination process and not beg to be accepted. It was about giving them my full self, and then seeing if they still wanted me.
Last Call - Pg 81
These days, I think people want real over anything. They want to see that you don't have it all figured out. They want to see that you don't have your shit completely together, that you struggle at times with your spouse or kids, that you are in debt like everyone else, that your extended family can drive you nuts, that you are bummed you gained a few pounds, and that, yes, on occasion, when nothing else is on, you will watch The Bachelor, Survivor, and Say Yes to the Dress. Perfect people are boring, and they have nothing in common with anyone else.
Last Call - Pg 76
"Maybe you are just the guy for the job. Maybe we need more pastors who admit they aren't heroes."
Last Call - Pg 76
"I like brown liquor, I curse like a sailor, and I look at pretty girls. I am not the right guy for the job. "
Last Call - Pg 76
He never told me what he saw, but he made it clear he saw it. Bill would always listen to my excuses, calmly smiling. Then he would tell me why I was wrong.
Last Call - Pg 74
We're comparing our true selves (the person we honestly see ourselves to be) to others' false selves (the image they are projecting out of their own insecurity).
Last Call - Pg 73
I am functioning at a higher level of "me-ness" and don't waste time and energy trying to figure out how it will be accepted by the masses. This is ridiculously hard for a former entertainer, whose future performances depended on how well the current performance was going. What people think of you when you are a comic actually does matter, because their reaction is the desired goal.
Last Call - Pg 59
Now to be clear, I don't endorse living in any of these stages, but I do endorse some brief visits. It is only when you don't go through all five that they tend to rear their head again later, and that's an even bigger bitch. Go to them, go through them—just don't set up residence.
Last Call - Pg 47
I knew I had an ego and wanted to be liked, and clergy didn't have those issues, right? (Obviously, I didn't know many clergy.)
Last Call - Pg 41
It's an exciting feeling knowing that you do something well and getting to share it with people. I don't have that feeling about a lot of things. I suck at sports, was only average at karate, and just a solid B student at school. To be good at something is a pretty great feeling.
Last Call - Pg 22
All other arts have rules and specific guidelines. Comedy does not. There is only one barometer of success: Did they laugh? And in order to know for sure, you need a "they."
Last Call - Pg 14
When we have the courage to show the world our imperfections, we find that others will show us theirs as well, and we can limp along the road together.
Last Call - Pg 13
"What will people think?" Those four words are poisonous. They have kept more people from singing karaoke and dancing like a fool than almost any other thing.
Last Call - Pg 12
I told her I was going to be a comic, and then a game show host, and then a talk show host, and then the day would come when I would take over The Tonight Show. (I could probe it because I had it all written down on a piece of paper with one-, five-, ten-, and twenty-year goals—in pen! I was not kidding around.)
Last Call - Pg 5
Jesus never said, "Sing and pray and tell me I'm great once a week." Can't find it. I've looked.
Last Call - Pg 1
When you "go home," things happen, whether you want them to or not. Your past collides with your future.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 249
People tend to blame Chaos whenever anything goes wrong, but in fact most of the time Chaos doesn't need to intervene. The Folk don't need any help when it comes to massacring one another. You name it, they did it—murder, rape, the sacrifice of infants—all the time blaming the sunless sky, when the darkness was already there, in their hearts.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 194
Well, that's history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue, and for the most part written by folk who weren't even there.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 194
And so on, throughout the animal world, the plant world, the mineral world. It was the longest lullaby the Nine Worlds had ever known, and a hymn to maternal love, was almost enough to touch my heart.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 173
Of course, Death and Dream are very close. Their territories intersect, which is why we so often dream of the dead. They dream of us, too, in their watery way.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 171
Around me, the hot dry wind of Hel stirred the souls of the departed into a kind of half sentience. I could feel them drawn to me, sensing the warmth of a living being. Not a pleasant feeling. I made a mental note to myself to try to avoid Death as long as I could.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 170
Power had taken its toll on him, and knowledge was eroding the rest. Perfect knowledge was what he'd craved, but with perfect knowledge, illusions die, including such perennials as friendship, love, and loyalty.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 169
I don't pretend to know much about love, but that's how great loves come to an end, not in the flames of passion, but in the silence of regret.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 79
And that's why the Goddess of Desire has two Aspects: the Maiden, ripe and beautiful as a golden peach in summertime; and the Crone, the carrion demon of battle, hideously beautiful, gloved in blood to her armpits and screaming with unsatisfied lust.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 53
All around there were objects of gold—jewellery, swords, shields—all embossed and gleaming with the soft sheen of beautiful things kept in darkness.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 34
Sweaty, hairy warlords with no polish and no address, whose idea of a good time was to kill a few giants, wrestle a snake, and then eat an ox and six suckling pigs without even taking a shower first, whilst belching a popular folk song. Of course the ladies gave me the eye.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 7
And that's why the King of Stories ended up being King of the gods, because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 6
But that's how religions and histories make their way into the world, not through battles and conquests, but through poems and kennings and songs, passed through generations and written down by scholars and scribes. And that's how, five hundred years later or so, a new religion with its new god came to supplant us—not through war, but through books and stories and words.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 2
"Sticks and stones may break my bones," as they say in the Middle Worlds, but with the right words you can build a world and make yourself the king of it.
The Gospel of Loki - Pg 2
I happen to know that history is nothing but spin and metaphor, which is what all yarns are made up of, when you strip them down to the underlay. And what makes a hit or a myth, of course, is how that story is told, and by whom.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 314
(This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.)
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 268
I was alone with the rumbling of the engine, the tinkling of the hangers, and the opening and closing of drawers. It was just me and time. It was like when we had a backstage tour at the ballet, and I saw the hundreds of weighted ropes, the bank of video monitors, and the light board with one thousand lighting cues, which were all used for one small scenery change. I was lying there on the bed, seeing the backstage of time, how slowly it went, everything it's made up of, which is nothing. The walls were dark blue carpet on the bottom, then a metal strip, then shiny wood, and then beige plastic to the ceiling. And I thought, What horrible colors, they might kill me, I have to close my eyes. But even the effort of that seemed impossible. So, like the ballet stage manager, I pulled one rope in my brain, then the other, then five more, which closed my eyelids. My mouth hung open, but no words came out, just a crackly moan. If there were words to it, what they would say was, Anything but this.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 266
The mean boys huddled nearby, looking over, hoping my mom wouldn't rat them out to their moms. Mom called to them, "That's really original, I wish I'd thought of that." I can pinpoint that as the single happiest moment of my life, because I realized then that Mom would always have my back. It made me feel giant. I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn't fall, because Mom was in the world.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 199
I felt so full of love for everything. But at the same time, I felt so hung out to dry there, like nobody could ever understand. I felt so alone in this world, and so loved at the same time.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 199
Maybe that's what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 147
"Nobody ever goes to the Space Needle restaurant!" she shrieked. Which is true, because even though it's at the top and it revolves—which should make it the only restaurant you'd ever go to—it's totally touristy and the food is expensive.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 135
So why didn't I switch schools? The other good schools I could have sent Bee to... well, to get to them, I'd have to drive past a Buca di Beppo. I hated my life enough without having to drive past a Buca di Beppo four times a day.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 133
I can feel the irrationality and anxiety draining my store of energy like a battery-operated racecar grinding away in the corner. This is energy I will need to get through the next day. But I just lie in bed and watch it burn, and with it any hope for a productive tomorrow. There go the dishes, there goes the grocery store, there goes exercise, there goes bringing in the garbage cans. There goes basic human kindness.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 126
It turns out, the whole time in L.A., Elgie was just a guy in socks searching for a carpeted, fluorescent-lit hallway in which to roam at all hours of the night.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 122
Paul,
Greetings from sunny Seattle, where women are "gals," people are "folks," a little bit is a "skosh," if you're tired you're "logy," if something is slightly off it's "hinky," you can't sit Indian-style but you can sit "crisscross applesauce," when the sun comes out it's never called "sun" but always "sunshine," boyfriends and girlfriends are "partners," nobody swears but someone occasionally might "drop the f-bomb," you're allowed to cough but only into your elbow, and any request, reasonable or unreasonable, is met with "no worries."
Have I mentioned how much I hate it here?
Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Pg 70
In case you were wondering: Bernadette Fox is walking around Seattle in the middle of winter wearing a fishing vest.
See you in class.
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