We are what we walk between.
“
| — | David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest |
American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.
“
| — | David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest |
Recursion
“A woman in a purple coat walks across my field of vision and then disappears behind a mooring. She has a thought about the color of the sky (which is cloudless and delicately blue) that makes her feel less alone. I write her thought in my journal and it’s shelved and forgotten then found and dusted and published and through the winds of trade is blown across oceans where a woman with a radio program reads it aloud into her microphone,
Sometimes doing a reasonable thing doesn’t feel good or right, that’s being human.
“
| — | Metroidpwner, messageboard post |
Perhaps because I rejoice in what I have, I don’t fret for what I haven’t.
“
| — | Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina |
When you reach the end you’ll see life is simple carpentry
You’re given all the tools you need to build your own reality
Did you spend your time making heaven?
Or did you make your own hell?
Be honest with yourself, because what you build is where you get to go
What you build is where you get to go
You’re given all the tools you need to build your own reality
Did you spend your time making heaven?
Or did you make your own hell?
Be honest with yourself, because what you build is where you get to go
What you build is where you get to go
“
| — | Cloud Cult, When You Reach The End |
It takes being a parent to understand how complicated love can be—especially as it relates to career and providing—and finding your own happiness as an individual is as important as being present for the child, in my opinion.
“
| — | Roy Wood Jr., Larry Wilmore: Black on the Air (3/6/22) |
See this thing. See inside what spins without purchase. Close your eye. Absolutely no salesmen will call. Relax. Lie back. I want nothing from you. Lie back. Relax. Quality soil washes right out. Lie back. Open. Face directions. Look. Listen. Use ears I’d be proud to call our own. Listen to the silence behind the engines’ noise. Jesus, Sweets, *listen*. Hear it? It’s a love song.
For whom?
You are loved.
For whom?
You are loved.
“
| — | David Foster Wallace, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way |
To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
“
| — | Joan Didion, Self-Respect |
Both Johnson and Risner declined requests to be interviewed on camera. Risner specifically cited his concern that an in person interview would jeopardize his personal safety. When Johnson was asked if it was acceptable to call people and threaten them about their jobs, he said, “If that’s the way you spin it, then you are a communist piece of garbage and you can put that on the record.”
Their threats and the threats of others have led election workers to quit. After eight years as elections director, Barron resigned from his position in November, citing threats to his personal safety. “I think at some point the law enforcement needs to step in and stop the harassment of public workers,” Barron told VICE News. “At some point I have to think about myself and how it affects my personal life … One of the things that I started finding is that little things were stressing me out in ways they hadn’t ever before. It was almost like PTSD.”
“
| — | Madeleine May, Trump Supporters Left Death Threats for Election Workers. We Called Back |
And then they’re like, ‘this is abuse, this is a form of abuse.’ Look man, I take abuse really seriously and we all should. But I don’t think all rejection is abuse. Life is about getting rejected, unfortunately. For everyone to get a ‘yes’, someone had to get a ‘no’. Every one of us here. The fact that you were in a relationship is because other people rejected them or rejected you. That’s the only reason we get there. Life is about rejection. People have a right to reject you—it’s shit, but they have a right to.
“
| — | Trevor Noah, Let’s Talk This Out – West Elm Caleb |
This story for me was like the perfect encapsulation of all the things that are great about social media but then are also the downsides, and part of it was a lot of the language people were using because they were saying what [West Elm Caleb] does, because apparently he sent some of the women the same playlist that he sent the other women but he called them different names, they were like, ‘oh he’s gaslighting us’ I was like no, that’s just recycling game. Most people have limited game, I don’t know why everyone thinks they’re fancy. Everything you think is unique to a person they’ve done to everyone else they’ve met. ‘Oh is it just me or are you—’ yeah, you’ve done it many times. There’s nothing spontaneous about anybody, they done all the shit you’ve met them doing—every sexual position, every everything, do you know what I mean? They’re not *gaslighting* you. And then they’re saying he’s *lovebombing* which if I understand correctly means, he was piling it on thick at the beginning and then just disappears. So he was like ‘I like you, I like you, texting, texting, texting, disappear’ and they were like ‘that’s lovebombing.’ And here’s the thing, I’m glad that people are going to therapy—I’m going to therapy—everyone’s going to therapy, but we should be careful to bring the therapy speak into life because we are not therapists. I don’t know if this is lovebombing, I think this is human nature. We get obsessed with a thing when it’s new, we love using it, and that’s it.
“
| — | Trevor Noah, Let’s Talk This Out - West Elm Caleb |