Cynthia

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.”
― Carol A. Dingle, Memorable Quotations: W.H. Auden

“He blinks several times. The house is spacious and beautiful but feels sterile to him, just like their lives. He doesn’t notice it as much when Asha fills it with her chatter and laughter, but even then, it never feels as full and rich as the family get-togethers he remembers from childhood. This is the life he envisioned, the life he hoped for, but somehow the American dream now seems hollow to him. Just a few weeks ago, his family back home was all gathered for Diwali dinner at his parents’ home, at least two dozen people in all. Krishnan was the only one missing, so they called him, passing the phone around so each could wish him a happy Diwali. He had been rushing out the door that day when the phone rang, but after hanging up, he sat motionless at the kitchen table with the phone in hand. It was evening in Bombay, and he could close his eyes and picture the millions of diyas, the tiny clay pots holding small flames lining the balconies, the street stalls, and the shop windows. Visitors came to exchange boxes of sweets and good wishes. Schools closed and children stayed up to enjoy fireworks. Ever since he was a child, it had been one of his favorite nights of the year, when the whole of Bombay took on a magical feel.”
― Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Secret Daughter

“it evokes so powerfully what we all must have felt as children—the conviction that things are better elsewhere if only we could get there. The powerlessness of the child is what makes that so poignant: children are trapped in the world created for them by adults, and for most children the possibility of escape is remote. The same idea is present in the Freud poem, where he talks about the child … unlucky in his little State, some hearth where freedom is excluded, a hive whose honey is fear and worry … The sympathetic effect of these lines is immediately apparent. Yes, we all knew people like that when we were ourselves children.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, What W. H. Auden Can Do for You

“Catholic confession became a pious devotional exercise and had little to do with the development of real conscience or societal maturity. All notions of social sin, offenses against the common good, the family, the neighborhood, the rest of creation, or the future were all forgotten in favor of a few “hot” sins and an endless laundry list of trivia that we barely felt guilty about. Half of all confessions are about “missing Mass on Sunday.” We used to say that hearing 90 percent of confessions was like being stoned to death with marshmallows!”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater