Puna

“Shame, in other words, is conservative in the fullest sense; it is there to conserve our privacy, to conserve ourselves as we would prefer to be seen; to conserve our belief that we can conceal ourselves. Because shame is what is felt when we fail to perform well enough (think of potential humiliation of the stand-up comic). If shame is always possible, performance is everything. Our capacity for shame is a horrifying reminder of what we believe our preferred self really is - and that there is one - however much of a strain it may be to sustain it.”
― Adam Phillips, Attention Seeking

“Now, the linden, it turns out, is a radical tree, as different from an oak as a woman is from a man. It's the bee tree, the tree of peace, whose tonics and teas can cure every kind of tension and anxiety - a tree that cannot mistaken for any other, for alone in all the catalog of a hundred thousand earthly species, its flowers and tiny hard fruit hand down from surfboard bracts whose sole perserve purpose seems to be to state its own singularity. The lindens will come for her, starting with this ambush. But the full adoption will take years.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory