spicedmango

[spicedmango]

April 5, 2020

“The more I try to uncover whatever I’m looking for, the more I feel that I’m too far gone. I can feel the low, uneasy hum of self -delusion whenever I think about all of this –– a tone that gets louder the more I try to write and cancel it out. I can feel the tug of my deep and recurring suspicion that anything I might think about myself must be, somehow, necessarily wrong. In the end, the safest conclusions may not actually be conclusions. We are asked to understand our lives under such impossibly convoluted conditions. I have always accommodated everything I wish I were opposed to. Here, as in so many other things, the “thee” that I dread may have been the “I” all along.” - Trick Mirror

And, that, ladies and gentlemen – may conclude one of the best books I have ever read about how we define ourselves.

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March 21, 2020

Shortly before the novel’s revelation that the husband is having an affair, the narration switches from first to third person: the “I” becomes “the wife”. It’s an acknowledgement, from both the narrator and Affill, of the way that social conventions can become fundamental to our selfhood –– and sometimes by our own design. - Trick Mirror, Essay: Pure Heroines (PG. 122)

Cabarero then expands the Ulysses story into a third dimension, in which the hero suddenly becomes aware not just of his own story but also of his own need to be narrated. - Trick Mirror, Essay: Pure Heroines - regarding how we identify our identities, if you will, in relation to how other people tell it. (PG. 125)

But if this text exists to demonstrate that reality, then both things can always still be rewritten. The heroine’s journey, or her lack of one, serves as a reminder that whatever is dictated is not eternal, not predestined, not necessarily true. The trajectory of literary women from brave to blank to bitter is a product of material social conditions. The fact that the heroine’s journey is framed as a default one for women is proof of our failure to see, for so long, that other paths were possible, and that many other ones exist. - Trick Mirror, Essay: Pure Heroines - Jia Tolentino (PG 128)

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Let’s Talk About Death (Over Dinner)

Michael Hebb

On gauging someone’s readiness to talk: “You can be the change you want to see by extending the invitation and showing your willingness to talk, but that’s really all you can do.” PG. 24

“Despite the necessary ambiguity of advice in this book, there is one solid, golden rule that gets me through every difficult conversation about death -– or sex or drugs — with family, strangers, friends, lovers and even sworn enemies. I know that I need to identify and say the things I am afraid of saying. This is the tried-and-true method: to meet each person with radical vulnerability in these hard topics. Honesty and vulnerability are contagious.” PG. 33

Prompt: If you only had thirty days left to live, how would you spend them? Your last day? Your last hour?

Prompt: What foods do you remember a departed loved one cooking for you?

“One of the perennial pieces of wisdom shared by hospice nurses is to let our loved one know it is okay to leave us when it is time. Many deaths are prolonged by the sense that we need to stay alive for our family. Doing the impossibly difficult thing of letting a loved one knows that you are going to be okay will reduce suffering.” Pg. 54

Prompt: If you were to design your own funeral or memorial, what would it look like?

“... Because life is an incredible gift, and death helps us recognize this. We need more than a place to put our grief. We need opportunities to express our overwhelming joy at being alive, and we need to do it together.” Pg. 60

Prompt: Is there an excess of medical intervention at the end of life?

“... We live cures. We’re excellent at saving lives, but struggle to accept we can’t save everyone. And a good death is as important as a successful resuscitation.” PG. 65

Prompt: Do you have your will, advance-care directives and power of attorney complete and if not, why?

Prompt: What is the most significant end-of-life experience of which you’ve been a part?

Prompt: Why don’t we talk about death?

The message to shout from the mountaintop is not that the bad stuff that happened to you in childhood is going to kill you; instead it’s this: if you do talk about it, your chances of healing are much higher.” Pg. 98

Why we don’t talk about death: 1) the base-rate bias (we only provide probability for specific ages), 2) the normalcy bias (the belief that if something doesn’t happen to us, it never will), 3) the courtesy bias (we often state opinions that are socially acceptable, so that we do not offend the other person).

Prompt: How do you talk to kids about death?

“Death is a land that has no experts — we are all looking into the void together.” Pg. 108

Prompt: Do you believe in an afterlife?

“Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” - pg. 109

“I’ve always thought life is like a penny,” Monica said, reflecting on the experience. “You can see one side or the other, but you can’t see both at the same time. This side is life, and death is the other side of the coin. But it’s all one thing.” Pg. 113

“Everything we say about death is actually about life.” Kyoto Mori pg. 116

Allie Hoffman - reporter with People Magazine (Covered Brittany Maynard)

“I try to ask myself every day: Could I live more like that? Could I acknowledge the fragility of right now? Could I stay on the lookout for a flash of sapphire under the dying leaves?” Pg. 123

Are you an organ donor? What surprised me about reading this chapter is the feeling people (in this prompt, they discussed teenagers) get when they receive an organ that saves their lives. It’s almost like a rebellion against their own bodies – because someone had to die for them to live. Also, the fact that people simply do not want to be organ donors (unless religious) simply because they can’t bear to think about it... despite the lives they know they would save.

Prompt: What song would you want played at your funeral? Who would sing it?

Prompt: What does a good death look like?

Prompt: What do you want done with your body?

“When we don’t know how to honor our loved ones, it adds immense confusion to devastating loss and elongates the healing process. If we know of a clear ritual to honor their legacy, if we know their desires, we have a powerful role to play.” PG. 149


“Ritual is a powerful and imperfect science. Ritual and death have been fused for the entire history of mankind. Nowhere is it clearer than in a relationship to how we treat our bodies or our dead loved ones. As we consider what we want, it is important to realize that we are pulling from thousands of years of tradition.” PG. 151

Prompt: Are there certain deaths we should never speak of?

“When author and speaker Megan Devine talks about grief, she says that one of the most important things you can do is to be “known as the person who can withstand the details.” PG. 169

Prompt: If you could extend your life, how many years would you add? Twenty, fifty one hundred, forever?

“Consciously or not, we realize that life without an end would be come a flat, featureless expanse, just one thing after another, literally ad infinitude. Endlessness would suck the vitality out of our existence.” PG. 173

“We need endings. Because the most basic ending of all is built into us. My mortality does not negate meaning. It creates meaning. It is not how long I live that matters. It is how I live. And I intend to do it well, to the end. We are finite beings within infinity.” PG. 174

“To sum up this deep dive into life extension and primal fear: I hope that we can begin to be more clear: Are we afraid of talking about death, or are we afraid of dying? Are we afraid of dying, or are we afraid of not having left and authentic mark on the world? And perhaps we can shed even more of presumptions and anxiety and accept that it is enough to use have lived and then died. As Lesley so poignantly asked: What’s wrong with dying?” PG. 178

Prompt: What do you want your legacy to be?

“I don’t think anyone decides to have a child because they think it’s going to be easy. It’s all about accepting uncertainty. Paul was initially way more certain than I was — he even wanted to have twins. In Breath Becomes Air Lucy asks Paul, “Don’t you think saying goodbye to your child will make your death more painful?” And Paul responds, “Wouldn’t it be great if it did?” He added later, “We would carry on living, instead of dying.”

Prompt: How long should we grieve?

“Grief has no time limit, it is not about time. It is about letting go of a person we loved, a future that we imagined them in, and it also means letting go of a part of ourselves that we may be attached to. There is a wound that is created, and every wound heals at a different rate.” PG. 190

“It’s been said that we’re not as afraid of death as w are of grief. I think it is worth meditating on that thought. It is pretty immense.” PG. 191

“People will say to her... “My mom doesn’t understand how to be there for me. My best friend isn’t reaching out to me. My friends left me.” And Dianne tells them, not unkindly. “That’s the way it goes, sister, because people are people. In times of grief, choose your tribe.” PG. 192

“Accepting death doesn’t mean you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies...”

Prompt: What would you eat for your last meal?

Prompt: Is there a way you want to feel on your deathbed?

“Shame drips into every part of our lives, and death has some of the richest waters for it to dissolve. As bestselling author Brene Brown states, “Shame needs three things to grow: secrecy, silence and judgement....” “From a physiological perspective, shame throws us into flight, flight or freeze. It is not a state where growth occurs. When we shame each other around death, we literally suspend our ability to heal or grow.” PG. 209

Prompt: What would you want people to say to you at your own funeral?

“If I don’t know how to properly receive love, then what could I possibly know about being alive? I was only using one side of my heart –– giving love, taking care of people (and avoiding those who I didn’t want to love anymore). I had built up this massive muscle — unbalanced and in danger. I didn’t arrive at a pithy epitaph that day, but what this bizarre gift did provide was the clear directive that receiving love is where I needed to focus my attention.” Pg. 214

“What if, whenever possible, we leaned in toward mortality a little more?... What if we stopped pretending, until the last breath was drawn, that it was all going to get better? What if we gave the experience some space, not just for ourselves to grieve, but for the person who’s dying to grieve too?... It takes unbelievable gumption and heart to say, this is it, so hold me and tell me you love me. It takes strength to invite death in and to know when to stop raging against the dying light. To not put on a happy face and not to make any more plans together and just sit with the truth that one of you is leaving.” PG. 215

Epilogue

“It is a conversation that expands our understanding of compassion and has the capacity to connect us more poignantly than any topic I have encountered. As Ram Dass reminds us, “We are all just walking each other home.”

“It drives home the truth that there is no one way to end a conversation about death, and there Is no one way to talk about death. Death walks with us our entire life. The best thing I can suggest is that we all get better acquainted with our constant companion.” PG. 221

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When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi

January 2020

“And now, finally, maybe I had arrived at denial. Maybe total denial. Maybe in the absence of any certainty, we should just assume we’re going to live a long time. Maybe that’s the only way forward.” - Pg. 165

“Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong in the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, stats, all the vanities of the preacher of Ecclesiastes described hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.” - Pg. 198

“And yet this is not always an easy place to be. The weather is unpredictable. Because Paul is buried on the windward side of the mountains, I have visited him in blazing sun, shrouding fog, and cold, stinging rain. It can be as uncomfortable as it is peaceful, both communal and lonely — like death, like grief — but there is beauty in all of it, and I think this is good and right.” - Epilogue, pg. 222

“Paul’s decision to look death in the eye was a testament not just to who he was in the final hours of his life but who he had always been. For much of his life, Paul wondered about death — and whether he could face it with integrity. In the end, the answer was yes.

I was his wife and a witness.” - Epilogue, pg. 225

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Wednesday, January 1st 2020

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

Because – isn’t it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture —? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it’s a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what’s right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: “Be yourself.” “Follow your heart.”

Only here’s what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted —? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster? Is Kitsey right? If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement, the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all the promise of being somehow a better person? Or — like Boris — is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?

It’s not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn’t understand. The first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.

A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.”

-The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt, pg. 761

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09/25/19

“Love can terrify; love can start a fire. Holding on tonight; we’re burning like a lighter. Everything inside is burning with desire, now.”

- “Better”, SYML

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09/22/2019

“The real truth was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping so much on the not-a-shit side as one can.”

“We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that; hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs, it longs for contact.” 

- Frederik Backman, “My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry.”

09/22/2019

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no other person on this planet was made for you, they were made for themselves. love is all about choices. no one is going to be perfect for you, and i think we need to stop raising everyone on the belief that someone out there, just one other person in the whole world, was “made for you” because it isn’t true. no one is made for you, besides you. other people belong to themselves. if you want to make it work with someone, it’s about hard work, understanding, compassion, communication, and choice

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Shantaram - gregory david roberts

“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -- the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.”

--

“The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.”

--

“What we call cowardice is often just another name of being taken by surprise, and courage is seldom any better than simply being well prepared.”

--

“There’s a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world.” 

--

“There’s no such thing as forever” she answered in her slow, deliberate way. “I don’t know why we use the word.”’

--

“That’s not wise, Lin. I think wisdom is very overrated. Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it. I’d rather be clever than wise, any day.”

--

“What is necessary? That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India.”

--

“But I couldn’t respond. My culture had taught me all the wrong things well. So I lay completely still, and gave no reaction at all. But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can’t be stilled.

I clenched my teeth against the stars. I closed my eyes. I surrendered to sleep. one of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.”

--

“People always hurt us with their trust, Karla said to me once. The surest way to hurt someone you like, is to put all your trust in him.”

--

“I let myself believe that it was meant for me, or that at least some part of it was born in feelings that were mine. I knew it wasn’t true, but love seldom concerns itself with what we know or with what’s true.”

--

“Some of the worst wrongs, Karla once said, were caused by people who tried to change things.”

--

“But after the rape, Karla lost the part of loving that grows in trust. Other kinds of love remained in her - friendship, compassion, sexuality - but the love that believes and trusts in the constancy of another human heart, romantic love, was lost.” 

--

“Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they’re the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky.” 

--

“That’s why hate has no great literature; real fear and real hate have no words.”

--

“Someone once told me once that if you make your heart into a weapon, you always end up using it on yourself.”

--

“I love you, Karla,” I said when we were alone again. “I loved you the first second I saw you. I think I’ve loved you for as long as there’s been love in the world. I love your voice. I love your face. I love your hands. I love everything you do, and I love the way you do everything. It feels like magic when you touch me. I love the way your mind words, and the things you say. and even though it’s all true, all that, I don’t really understand it and I can’t explain it -- to you or to myself. I just love you. I just love you with all my heart. You do what God should do: you give me a reason to live. You give me a reason to love the world.”

--

“Personality and personal identity are in some ways like coordinates on the street map drawn by our intersecting relationships. We know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them.”

--

“Jealousy, like the flawed love that bears it, has no respect for time or space or wisely reasoned argument. Jealousy can raise the dead with a single, spiteful taunt, or hate a perfect stranger for nothing more than the sound of his name.” 

--

“Remember,” Khaled said insistently, resting his hand on my forearm to emphasize his words. “Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong -- that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that what we do is right.” 

--

“And I knew, in the way we know without a word that love is lost, or in the sudden , sure way we know that a friend is false and doesn’t really like us at all, that Khader’s war would end much worse, for all of us, than it had begun.”

--

“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.”

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Lemonade

I think of lovers as trees. Growing to, and from, one another. Searching for the same light.

---

Ashes to ashes, Dust to side chicks.

---

My grandma said - Nothing real can be threatened. True love brought salvation back to me. With every tear came redemption. And my torturer, became my remedy. So we’re going to heal; we’re going to start again. You’re the magician. Pull me back together again the way you cut me in half. Make the woman in doubt disappear.

[spicedmango]

Aren’t we?

I got love for the game but ay I'm not in love with all of it. Could do without the fame and the rappers nowadays are comedy. The hootin' and the hollerin', back and forth with the arguing. Where you from, who you know, what you make and what kind of car you in. Seems as though you lost sight of what's important when depositin'. The cheques into your bank account and you up out of poverty. Your values is a disarray, prioritizing horribly. Unhappy with the riches cause you’re piss poor morally. Ignoring all prior advice and fore warning. And we mighty full of ourselves all of a sudden aren't we? -T.I.

#hustle + keep your shit straight

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Elastic

And I know that I can survive, I’ve walked through fire to save my life And I want it; I want my life so bad I’m doing everything I can Yet another one bites the dust It’s hard to lose a chosen one You did not break me; I’m still fighting for peace. I’ve got thick skin and an elastic heart - But your knife might be too sharp I’m like a rubber band,  until you pull too hard Yeah I may snap when I move too close No, you won’t see me fall apart Cause I’ve got an elastic heart.

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“You can only really grow when you start being honest with yourself about who you are in the first place.” —  Ryan O'Connell

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For my heart:

Wander if you lust, seek sights to see. Push the mind, you must; test its elasticity. Though as you run so hastily, please Water your roots, love, find your way; back home to me.

1/2016

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“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.” ― Kristin Hannah

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I’m sorry

Hello from the other side I must have called a thousand times To tell you, I’m sorry,  for everything that I’ve done But when I call, you never seem to be home.

Hello from the outside At least I can say that I’ve tried To tell you I’m sorry for breaking your heart When it don’t matter; it clearly  doesn’t tear you apart anymore.

[spicedmango]

that is the deal, my dear

Lucky I have strong legs like my mother To run for cover when I need it And these two eyes that for no other The day you leave will cry a river