Abbie Simons > Recent Status Updates

Interesting to realize as I’m reading this: the author’s (valid) insistence on adjusting most pronouns used in excerpts etc (to match historical individuals’ truer gender identity), is really confusing the fuck outta me. I do wonder if this approach will stick culturally because I’m not sure it works, but also appreciate the way it’s forcing me to notice and loosen my expectations.

“The contents of the shelter came from the twilight period of the Age of Enlightenment.”

What I love about this book is the way it reminds me that WE are the ancients of some future civilization. We are rudimentary in ways we don’t know about yet. And much can be lost. But monks will always be monking (potentially)!

I love fixations because I’m suddenly devouring this book after struggling with it for months. Cities are my passion!!!

Some books should have pictures and this is one of those books

I love it

The densest fiction I’ve read in quite some time, and I’m having so much fun :’)

I’m enjoying the challenge of reading this and am taking my time, allowing it to marinate. I notice that aspects of the approach make me bristle, and then once I settle I’m able to take more in. Some aspects are validating/affirming, others are objectively interesting, others don’t interest me much. I’ll keep taking my time with this one and come away with what resonates.

Creative Neglect 🤤

Freakin love this book

“I still fold moments of particular intensity into me. But now I do so with a bit of a spell attached. I promise, I will be ready for you when you find me.”

“What no one is prepared for, however, is the even larger entrance waiting for them, opening into an even greater void.”

“We must progress beyond this tendency to blame the mothers. And we must at the same time become conscious of our anger and frustration, the sense of abandonment we have all known at times, daughters of women in crisis like ourselves. And then, having lived through the shock of acknowledging our rage at the mother, we must learn how to place it in a social context,…” WHEW

“Perhaps Jung’s greatest accomplishment was to reveal the unconscious to be the creative source of all that we eventually become as individuals. In fact, our conscious minds and personalities develop and mature *from* the raw material of the unconscious, in interactive play with life experiences.”

A few things: after reading the portion about discovering that the inside of the house is inexplicably bigger than its exterior envelope, I used the built in dust jacket to mark my page and realized it’s cut slightly smaller than the pages and doesn’t fit. A delight in that moment. Also, I think the last time I read this book I was so consumed with finishing that I robbed myself of the appendices. Not this time.

“Echolocation comes down to the crude assessment of simple sound modulations, whether in the dull reply of a tapping cane or the low, eerie flutter in one simple word—perhaps your word—flung down empty hallways long past midnight.”

“‘The dive is a spiritual thing,” Davide said. “I learn how to listen to my body. I must listen or I will die. In the water, I must learn the difference between fear and danger.’ He did not know it, but Davide was describing the journey of radical self love.”

“On Nikki’s eighteenth birthday, I biked across the city, heart thundering, to bring her a card.”

This book isn’t quite what I was looking for, but the points it makes are good to be reminded of.

Having an interesting experience reading this book. Noticing my doubts, my judgements, my curiosity and my commiseration. Parts of this story are painfully familiar.

“Shut your eyes and you’re flying through the universe.”

Loving the ideas of:
- The “leisure time” that came with 21st century tech advances actually drove us crazy
- “The spirit of the times is one of joyless urgency” - Marilynne Robinson
- Embracing the Limited Life
- Time turning from the water you swim in to something you attempt to gather, hoard, and bind up with self-worth
- What you attempt to master ends up mastering you
- Control and usefulness as illusory