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The fact is that we have no way of knowing if the person who we think we are is at the core of our being. Are you a decent girl with the potential to someday become and evil monster, or are you an evil monster that thinks it's a decent girl?" "Wouldn't I know which one I was?" "Good God, no. The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves. ↗
I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language. That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that's like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been booing on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know that they existed until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. ... So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it's tempting to thing to yourself, 'The man can't possibly be that stupid!' But yes. Yes, he can. Our innate strengths just aren't the same. We are the mighty hunters, who are good at focusing on one thing at a time. For crying out loud, we have to turn down the radio in the car if we suspect we're lost and need to figure out how to get where we're going. That's how impaired we are. I'm telling you, we have only the one conversation. Maybe some kind of relationship veteran like Michael Carpenter can do two, but that's pushing the envelope. Five simultaneous conversations? Five? Shah. That just isn't going to happen. At least, not for me. ↗
I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away. ↗
A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done. ↗
Depression, we are told over and over again, is a brain disease, a chemical imbalance that can be adjusted by antidepressant medication. In an informational brochure issued to inform the public about depression, the US National Institute for Mental Health tells people that 'depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain' and adds that 'important neurotransmitters - chemicals that brain cells use to communicate - appear to be out of balance'. This view is so widespread that it was even proffered by the editors of PLoS [Public Library of Science] Medicine in their summary that accompanied our article. 'Depression,' they wrote, 'is a serious medical illness caused by imbalances in the brain chemicals that regulate mood', and they went on to say that antidepressants are supposed to work by correcting these imbalances. The editors wrote their comment on chemical imbalances as if it were an established fact, and this is also how it is presented by drug companies. Actually, it is not. Instead, even its proponents have to admit that it is a controversial hypothesis that has not yet been proven. Not only is the chemical-imbalance hypothesis unproven, but I will argue that it is about as close as a theory gets in science to being dis-proven by the evidence. ↗
I reached down and picked up a baseball bat at my feet and I flung it as hard as it could. It circled and arced high in the air until it slammed against the side of the dining hall with a crack and fell. I sat down in the dirt. Then I lay down in the dirt. Because not only was there no trail to follow, there was no evidence he’d ever been here. There was no evidence any of them had been here. ↗
#dating #glass-girl #government #high-school #laura-anderson-kurk
Dear 2600: I think my girlfriend has been cheating on me and I wanted to know if I could get her password to Hotmail and AOL. I am so desperate to find out. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. And this is yet another popular category of letter we get. You say any help would be appreciated? Let’s find out if thats true. Do you think someone who is cheating on you might also be capable of having a mailbox you don’t know about? Do you think that even if you could get into the mailbox she uses that she would be discussing her deception there, especially if we live in a world where Hotmail and AOL passwords are so easily obtained? Finally, would you feel better if you invaded her privacy and found out that she was being totally honest with you? Whatever problems are going on in this relationship are not going to be solved with subterfuge. If you can’t communicate openly, there’s not much there to salvage. ↗
Can we reconcile indefinitely these two imperatives: the desire to preserve every individual's special identity and the need for Europeans to be able to communicate with one another all the time and as freely as possible? We cannot leave it to time to solve the dilemma and prevent people from engaging, a few years hence, in bitter and fruitless linguistic conflicts. We know all too well what time will do. The only possible answer is a voluntary policy aimed at strengthening linguistic diversity and based on a simple idea: nowadays everybody obviously needs three languages. The first is his language of identity; the third is English. Between the two we have to promote a third language, freely chosen, which will often but not always be another European language. This will be for everyone the main foreign language taught at school, but it will also be much more than that--the language of the heart, the adopted language, the language you have married, the language you love. ↗
As Luke knelt down beside his corpse, Clary couldn’t help but remember what he had said about having loved Valentine once, about having been his closest friend. Luke, she thought with a pang. Surely he couldn’t be sad — or even grieved? But then again, perhaps everyone should have someone to grieve for them, and there was no one else to grieve for Valentine. ↗
#city-of-glass #death #grief #luke-garroway #the-mortal-instruments
