A passion should be the thing you would do even if nobody paid you to do it, even if you had to go without air-conditioning or snacks, because some mysterious energy inside you rises to meet its challenge. One hates to see the word—or the feeling—diluted.
Berit Brogaard sees hate as “a complex emotion, built out of the negative emotions: resentment, condemnation, and reprehension.” We tend to fasten down on any one of those feelings, equating hatred with a vicious dislike, cold contempt, or utter disgust. That is too simple. Hate draws its power from the swirling mixture.
Instead of watching with vigilance for a stacked-stone wall or an S-curve or a white church steeple, I respond to robotic voice commands. It is a state of mind that turns me inward, disconnecting me from the land even as I move across it.
About seventy-five percent of all compliments are about appearance, with only five or six percent falling into categories of performance, ability, taste, or possessions. Why are we so shallow and unimaginative?
Shakespeare wanted us to struggle with an inscrutable villain. With evil itself. Our age equates evil with psychopathy, pointing to a physiological absence of the brain structures and biochemicals that give us empathy.
“Check in on your single friends,” freshly elected Vice President Kamala Harris urged last Thanksgiving. Five simple words, but behind them a sea change in how we organize our common lives.
Nothing is as simple, as pure, or as absolute as we want it to be. And there is intrigue and rich meaning in all these layers we cover over.
There is strength in bitchiness. Which takes me to the root of my aversion: Why, in women, was (and is) strength equated with meanness?
What I knew was the surface. But Eleanor, David Michaelis’s recent biography, let me step into her heart. Now I could imagine how she ached for her father’s company, how her relatives’ comments must have stung, how her school days charged her mind and set it in perpetual motion. How awkward it was for her to show tenderness, how desperately she craved it. How fully she became herself and what power that gave her.
We need to give each other rooms. Giving “space” can be necessary, but space also needs to be enclosed; to protect what lies within its walls.
These whips are called “disciplines” or “scourges.” Some are made of leather; his seems gentler, a coarse fine rope. It is the pale tan of wheat, which makes the bloodstain more prominent.
I suppose I should find women-with-guns refreshing. At least there is some power to it. But why did an industry spring up around pretending that women are something other than who we are? Is who we are that dull, that devoid of erotic appeal?