meuceph

[meuceph]

She taught me to be critical of any ideology that claimed to know best if those espousing it didn't listen to me about what I wanted, much less needed. She taught me distrust. What progressives who ignore history don't understand is that just like racism is taught, so is distrust. Especially in households like mine, where parents and grandparents who had lived through Jim Crow, COINTELPRO, Reaganomies, and the "war on drugs" talked to their children early and often about how to stay out of trouble. When the cops harassed you, but didn't bother to actually protect and serve when violence broke out between neigh-bors, lectures from outsiders on what was wrong with our culture and community weren't what was needed. What we needed was the economic and racial privilege we lacked to be put to work to protect us. Being skeptical of those who promise they care but do nothing to help those who are marginalized is a life skill that can serve you well when your identity makes you a target. There's no magic shield in being middle class that can completely insulate you from the consequences of being in a body that's already been criminalized for existing.

-Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism

[meuceph]

This was Dr. Ham's whole theory: that because of its repetitive nature, complex trauma is fundamentally relational trauma. In other words, this is trauma caused by bad relationships with other people-- people who were supposed to be caring and trustworthy and instead were hurtful. That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing that relational dance with other people. Not just reading self-help books or meditating alone. We had to go out and practice maintaining relationships in order to reinforce our shattered belief that the world could be a safe place.

-Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know

[meuceph]

Thinking doesn't overcome fear. Action does.

-Adam, Sex Education

[meuceph]

We are all migrants through time. -Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

[meuceph]

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,   

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

-Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

[meuceph]

Psychological burdens may weigh on us, yet in reality they are forgotten once we are faced with actual physical ones. Maybe that’s why we choose to carry the physical burdens — they take our minds off the intangible, the real troubles in life.

Suzanne Roberts, “Twenty Eight Days on the John Muir Trail”

[meuceph]

I think that something similar happens with our psychic muscles. They cramp around our wounds-- the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both-- to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again, to keep foreign substances out. So those wounds never have a chance to heal. Perfectionism is one way our muscles cramp. In some cases we don't even know that the wounds and the cramping are there, but both limit us. They keep us moving and writing in tight, worried ways. They keep us standing back or backing away from life, keep us from experiencing life in a naked and immediate way.

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

[meuceph]

Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up.

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

[meuceph]

'Do it every day for a while,' my father kept saying. 'Do it as you would do scales on the piano. Do it by prearrangement with yourself. Do it as a debt of honor. And make a commitment to finishing things.'

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

[meuceph]

For an adolescent trying to cement a life from the shards of loss and displacement, the monotheistic idea has to have been immensely powerful. It resonated with what Muhammad knew of the stark purity of the desert, that sense of an animating force far greater than anything human. It spoke to his own yearning for unity, for a way to bridge the gap he experienced between belonging and not belonging. And it seemed to offer the grand ideal of all peoples coming together in acknowledgement of a force so beyond human comprehension that one could only stand in awe of it and acknowledge the pettiness of human differences.

Lesley Hazleton, The First Muslim

[meuceph]

The addict seeks to escape the pain of being human in one of two ways-- by transcending it or by anesthetizing it. Borne aloft by powerful enough chemicals, we can almost, if we're lucky, glimpse the face of the Infinite. If that doesn't work, we can always pass out. Both ways work. The pain goes away. The artist takes a different tack. She tries to reach the upper realm not by chemicals but by labor and love... If the upper realm is, as Plato suggested, the sphere of perfect love, truth, justice, and beauty, then the artists seeks to call down the magic of this world and to create, by dint of labor and luck, the closest-to-sublime simulacra of those qualities that he or she can. This pursuit produces, for the artist, peace of mind.

Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

[meuceph]

When we fail, we are off the hook. We have given ourselves a Get Out Of Jail Free card. We no longer have to ask and answer Stanislavsky's famous three questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want?

Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

[meuceph]

Death is not a permanent condition. You can be afraid of death, that's fine. As long as you feel something after death. And that's rebirth. The idea that rebirth is possible from the very worst, the dregs of the world, the dregs of experience, and you can make something cyclically come alive again. That's the closest a human being can get to God.

Phil Stutz, Stutz

[meuceph]

A good friend will maybe drive someone to the mall in the daytime so that they can buy a blazer. They don't go on a giggly late night crime date so that they can steal one. That's girlfriend stuff.

Cece, New Girl

[meuceph]

Charity can be a lifestyle, not merely a gift. Read charitably. Give the author your most favorable interpretation. Listen charitably. Donate your undivided attention. Work charitably. Be generous with your expertise. In this way, you make charity a daily habit.

James Clear

[meuceph]

The truth always comes out. On the side of Truth is Time.

The Trojan Horse Affair

[meuceph]

A good sound design has texture. ‘The beauty of the desert is not the sand but the ripples in the sand.’ The texture is the way things feel. Sound can make an audience feel hot or cold even though the temperature of the room does not change.

Sound Design for Filmmakers