Charli > Recent Status Updates

I will always be chasing the thrill of finding a series even remotely like Warriorcats 😔

Gideon the Ninth has been the closest so far. Rooting for this one tho ☝🏼

“Use it to prove how the stars
were always what we knew

they were: the exit wounds
of every
misfired word.”

— pg. 58 🌌

“Star. Or rather, the drains of heaven—waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just long enough for us to slip through.” - pg. 14

“What nature provides, in a neuromodulator like oxytocin, is the ability for two brains in love to go through a period of heightened plasticity, allowing them to mold to each other and shape each other’s intentions and perceptions.” - pg. 121

🔥 Dopamine - excitement, arousal, high gear
🧡 Oxytocin - calm, warmth, tenderness

It sounds goofy as hell but why is it lowkey effective 😔🤙🏼

“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” - pg. 57 🌱

was J.S. Mill a time traveler? 🤨

Highlights:

- “Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.” - pg. 41

- All of pg. 30 *cough* 🦅🇺🇸

- “…they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon them.” - pg. 40

- “…received passively…doing nothing for the mind or heart except…to keep them vacant.” - pg. 39

BDNF, nucleus basalis

“…his conflict about learning—his wish to avoid it—was based mostly on years of frustration and on a very legitimate fear of failure based on his brain’s limits. Once he was liberated from his difficulties by [prescribed exercises strengthening formerly blocked brain functions], his innate love of learning emerged full force.” - pg. 41 🧠🌱 (neuropsychology, I 🧡 u)

Great emphasis on defining pivotal yet commonly overlooked or oversimplified terms, such as “Love” and “Spirituality.” Pinning down the shape of genuine love is indispensable for our growth both personally and communally. It’s also important to help distinguish between the feeling of care that often mimics love (i.e. cathecting) as distinct from the nurturing reality of genuine love.

Note to future self: Understanding + Compassion are key ingredients for happiness 🧡🤲🏻

Deep listening is also incredibly powerful and the practice of remaining present 🤝🏻

A page-turner to start off 2026!

I love how much this references biology and history. There are so many cues, symbols, and interwoven themes. It’s deeply romantic in that time-conscious, ever-wondering way that makes me ask again and again, “Why now? What were the chances? What trivial coincidences led to us?” And also, most importantly, “You make me laugh. Now, and of all things: we are us together only.”

“Old fools are babes again, and must be used
With checks, as flatteries, when they are seen abused.”
- pg. 78 👑

“In a way scientific exploration of human consciousness is just an extension of the arts, theater, literature, and even religion… a project that has moved human beings for centuries: to apply the mind to its own understanding.” pg. 13

“What genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking. Only Jane Austin did it and Emily Brontë… They wrote as women write, not as men write.” pg. 75 ✍🏻🤵‍♀️

“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

“Certainly travelers had returned from the heart and tried to represent what they had seen, but love was in the end like a species of rare colored butterfly, often sighted, but never conclusively identified.” 🦋 pg. 75

“My mistake was to confuse a destiny to love with a destiny to love a given person. It was the error of thinking that Chloe, rather than love, was inevitable.” pg. 11