Alison Rose > Recent Status Updates

[this book is really long and also feels like it is a hundred times longer than it is jfc]

[took a whole ass third of the way into this book for anything interesting to happen or for there to be literally anything but musing and description]

Exhausted, beaten down, full of sorrow, and yet so grateful for small things. Perhaps it was at just such times of hardship and sadness that folk noticed the little kindnesses, the brief moments of beauty.

In my book, the vilest&worst was the human monster: a man like Mathuin of Laois, whose actions made clear he was devoid of any good qualities. Compassion, for instance.Kindness. Fairness. Justice. The ability to put himself in someone else's shoes...We all had times when we failed to display those qualities. But they existed in us, provided we could dig deep enough. They seemed entirely lacking in Mathuin

[or Trump]

Her mind's away, off somewhere else. In the past, most likely. Know that feeling. Know it better than I want to, the dark things that never go away, the sunny, precious things that go all too soon.

Hope, she thought, was as easily extinguished as a guttering candle on a day of Spring storm. Over and over she had seen it tremble and die. Yet even now she was making plans again, looking ahead, seeing the way things might unfold. Her capacity to endure astonished her.

I told Tula, 'I can carry you.' She seemed okay with that and held up her arms. I picked her up and was going to tell her to put her arms around my neck and hold on, but she immediately clamped on to me like a tentacled parasite in a horror show.

I know she meant well, but it was not making me less nervous to keep pointing out that I looked nervous.

Overse recommended a book on human evolution and it was even more fucking weird than anything I'd read about it before.

We humans have the ability to hold & bear a multitude of truths at the same time. A variety of realities. A diversity of gospels. I can be in pain & be able to laugh. I can grieve for my son & be proud of my daughters. I can suffer w/every inhale & feel blessed w/every exhale. & that expansive capacity, that artful woven-ness, is the utter quintessence of being human. It is the core of walking through this existence.

Before, it was the kind of desperation that felt like holding my breath until I could come up and gasp the nourishing air back into collapsed lungs. But now it will be a forever breathlessness. An eternal, ardent craving living within me. A roommate in my soul. A roommate I don't want to share myself with and I didn't choose.

If we always treat the person next to us as if they are the Messiah disguised as a regular person, we will be careful w/how we speak &what we do in their presence. If they choose not to reveal themselves in our lifetime, it will not matter b/c we will have behaved respectfully &carefully w/that regular person next to us. This is the most decent thing we can do in this complex&loud world, piled w/confusion&brokenness.

The particular abuse the hostage families sustained is different from normative trauma, as when the blow from a truck crushes& ruptures every morsel then drives away. But ambiguous trauma is when the truck makes its cruel impact, demolishing& mutilating, & also stays on top of the broken person. This renders the shattered being underneath paralyzed w/agony &torment indefinitely. Pinned& trapped. In every single way.

The beauty of Jewish learning is that we are never done.

It was not only the most brutal but the most prestigious JC among Singapore's top 5 ...I donned my crisp new uniform, prominently adjusted the pin bearing the school's crest on my starched collar, &basked in the once-overs from other commuters as I strode onto the train. When I saw, carved roughly w/a penknife into the side of my desk 'welcome to hell', I felt thrilled this was a hell that admitted only a select few.

Many people go their whole lives not quite believing it is theirs, feeling out of sorts in their body, convinced real life lies just beyond their grasp. Chasing a wisp of something they believe is owed to them.

[it's a good thing this is kinda weird because otherwise it would be a bit boring]

Sabine taps the empty bottle thoughtfully against the table. 'No. I did have a husband. Once.' There it is again, that flash of teeth. A smile so slight and yet so dazzling that when María sees it, the ground seems to pitch downhill. She finds herself leaning forward, the urge to follow, or to fall.
'How did he die?' she asks.
The widow's smile widens. 'Slowly.'

[queen shit]

María feels no maternal urge, no envy when she sees a babe swept up into a mother's arms. Everyone insists it is her purpose, and it drives her mad, the idea that the shape of her body determines the shape her life must take.

'Jim's the only son. Rolling in money, of course. Did you see that car of his? He's a Jew, of course, but a frightfully decent one.'

[thanks, Agatha :/ reading classic lit isn't always super fun times as a Jewish person..................]

When a condition or problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward & minces up w/a lot of other things already there & what comes out is discontent & uneasiness, guilt & a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone. Maybe the assembly-line psychoanalysts aren't dealing with complexes at all but w/those warheads that may one day be mushroom clouds.

It has been my experience to put aside a decision for future pondering. Then one day, fencing a piece of time to face the problem, I have found it already completed, solved, and the verdict taken ... It's as though, in the dark and desolate caves of the mind, a faceless jury had met and decided.

[This is very slow. Can't believe I'm only around halfway through it. I admit I've skimmed a bit because this feels more like a slice-of-life character study with a mystery side plot.]