Jane Dodge > Recent Status Updates

“How many among them could live their own death day after day, hour after hour, punctually? How many of them knew the ocean so intimately, savoring her without resent-ment, gradually learning not to fear her? I was almost eu-phoric, but contained myself. I have never been one for easy victories, after all.”

“They were cheap masks locked on fifth street thoughts — voice is gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast.”

“The River Niger and the Benue! Their robust consummation neatly bifurcated Nigeria north and south before cascading to the coast to spread its veins all over swampland and create the Delta from which all blessings flowed in the form of black gold, the spinal cord of the nation's economic standing. Papa Davina reasoned that a fair share of that belonged to him.”

“but when there's a knock on the door and a creature of beauty enters (female)
(after phoning)
hesitant smiling
with delightful curves and magic movements
I realize
she is more dangerous than all the armies of all time and
I know I didn't write my poems for that
and then I'm not sure and then I don't know again
and then I forget about knowing”
— “me and capote”

“you write me now
that the man in the cell next to yours didn't like my punctuation
the placement of my commas (especially) and also the way I digress in order to say something precisely. ah, he doesn't realize the intent
which is
to loosen up, humanize, relax”

“Madness begins where the relation of man to truth is disturbed and darkened.”

Wow. I’m listening to the audiobook and Ratajkowski tears up at the end of “Buying Myself Back” as she mentions carving out control and I just was moved to tears with her.
And she details feeling the carpet under her during the assault and any survivor could tell you that is so painfully accurate— this association with the bodily experience of the assault. Ugh. So good.

I had my doubts as to whether or not this was ghost written until now — where she details the nude leaking scandal and the painting stolen from her Instagram. My heart is breaking for her.

A big ole spider got into my house tonight and I was struggling to kill it and I thought to myself “is this my Tak?” Lord help.

“But Mr. Bennets failings as a father don’t register like Mrs. Bennets, perhaps because we find him endearingly funny and intellectual, hiding away in his library, while her only context is her motherhood.”

Wow. I’m listening to the audiobook so I can’t be arsed to grab the direct quote but one of the characters friend died in childhood suddenly and King is doing such a good job portraying that childhood existential crisis that arises upon tragedy that affects both parents and kids. I’m just like where was this when I needed it?

“On the verge of dying and still weighed down, still turbulent, … still not acknowledging the truth: that wisdom is justice.”

I’ve always felt the idea that “knowledge is power” is true, but pessimistic or reductive. The idea that wisdom is justice better fits in my worldview. Like I’m trying to rectify TEFL and linguistic imperialism and this is what I’ve been looking for.

So he’s going through the people he is endebted to, right: “to recognize the malice, cunning, and hypocrisy that power produces, and the peculiar ruthlessness often shown by people from ‘good families.’” I mean damn tell ‘em!

“Yugoslavia lasted as long as it did because its very existence offered an apparently workable solution to the two most complex problems in the Balkans — those of Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia.”

“The Albanian language emerged from the ghetto and, before long, textbooks and other publications from Albania proper flooded the schools and libraries of the province. The assumption that [Yugoslavia’s] dismissal would be gratefully received by submissive Albanians was mistaken. An articulate younger generation dominated the university in Pristina and was hungry to assert Albanian national rights.”

“Then came Albania’s electrification. The last village was attached to the national grid in the early 1970s although one experienced observer of Albania has pointed out that ‘the system has been on the blink ever since.’”

“The religion of the Albanian is Albanianism” Albanian poet Pashko Vase Shkodrani

“Above all else, Albania was dreadfully poor and riven by the most fragmented social structure in Europe, the product of extreme underdevelopment and manifold internal rivalries exacerbated by the divide-and-rule policy of the late Ottoman sultans and the Young Turks.“
Time period is late 1900s but we still can expect to see the same problems….

“…The dialogue starts over again with no end. And yet, Pyrrhus must decide. He stays or he leaves. If he stays, what will he do? If he leaves, how far will he go?”
OKAY damn

“Throughout the Balkans, peculiar geographic and political circumstances added to the material devastation caused by the war. With the exception of Greece and Turkey, all Balkan countries were worried that their access to the sea was conditional on the whims of others.”

“The mob always has the effect of minimizing or obscuring the role of those who bear political responsibility for its direction. All Balkan massacres this century [twentieth] have enjoyed the specific approval of state organs, whose agents have usually been the instigators as well.”

“The difficulty in defining the Balkans arises from the conflation of political and geographic descriptions that are themselves problematic.”

“Every one of her actions — whatever its direct purpose or motivation— is also read as an indication of how she would like to be treated… if a woman makes a good joke this is an example of how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she as a joker-woman would like to be treated by others. Only a man can make a good joke for its own sake.”

“It is necessary to keep a balance between connecting with a tradition and seeing the inadequacies of that tradition.”
I’ve already quite enjoyed this book as I think about how I can take this into the classroom with the peace corps. I think this is a great thing to consider while working with the conservative, Balkan tradition.

“Is it not strange that before the feminine symbol [Mary] could be called holy and lifted into God by the Western Catholic tradition, it had to be first desexed then dehumanized?”

“Women’s feelings were given no consideration, since controlling the woman’s body for the sexual benefit of the male was the only priority and men claimed that right exclusively for themselves.”

“In my mind from time to time, I resurrect and recreate her. I try to penetrate the unsaid feelings and emotions that hung between us. She keeps coming toward me through the flickering light, as in our first meeting, with that ironic sideways glance, and passes through me, leaving me with my doubts and regrets.”

“After the class I continue to sit in my chair, caught in the vacuum of light coming from the large curtainless windows that cover one side of the room.”

Chapter 6 is super interesting— early feminism and women’s dress!

“The historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations.”