I'm an Aries

And this, THIS is exactly me. It's from a post about fire signs from a more than slightly disreputable-looking astrology website :

You may have met that common-fire sign propensity to make vast Himalayan peaks out of perfectly ordinary molehills. It wasn't just a little disagreement, it was a Holocaust. It wasn't a nice film, it was Wonderful, Brilliant, Mind-Shattering. The overwhelming and contagious enthusiasm of the fire signs is hard to resist; so, too, is their anger. Fire signs often exaggerate their behaviour, dramatize it - even when they are alone. They aren't just spoiled brats trying to attract your attention. They need this fantasizing, this injection of brilliant colour and sound into the grey and banal fabric of what the world is constantly insisting is reality. Fire is not interested in the pragmatic approach to life. Take away a fire sign's fantasies and visions of how life might be, and you have crippled them. It is, truly, that serious. If there's one thing sacred to the fire signs, it is their dreams.

Marcus Aurelius

Do wrong to thyself, do wrong to thyself, my soul; but later thou wilt no longer have the opportunity of respecting and honoring thyself. For every man has but one life. But yours is nearly finished, though in it you had no regard for yourself but placed thy felicity in the souls of others. . . . But those who do not observe the impulses of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.

Goethe

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."

YES

From awhile ago

"What Makes Us Happy?", is an article that was published by The Atlantic in June of 2009. Like the title suggests, the article is about happiness: who has it, how we get it and how we cope with life when we don't have it. I read the article when it was published about a year ago but for many reasons, its findings have seemed increasingly relevant to my life. The piece investigates humans' relationship to happiness by 1) summarizing the findings of a longitudinal study of 268 male Harvard graduates who were followed from their sophomore year in college up until their deaths and 2) exploring the mind and personal life of the study's longtime director, George Vaillant. I highly recommend the article to anyone-- it's one of those pieces that provides essentially insight into how you live your life on a daily basis. I can say with 100% certainty that reading that article has improved my quality of life. In particular, the insight provided in the quoted section below has been especially useful:

"Vaillant explains defenses as the mental equivalent of a basic biological process. When we cut ourselves, for example, our blood clots—a swift and involuntary response that maintains homeostasis. Similarly, when we encounter a challenge large or small—a mother’s death or a broken shoelace—our defenses float us through the emotional swamp. And just as clotting can save us from bleeding to death—or plug a coronary artery and lead to a heart attack—defenses can spell our redemption or ruin. Vaillant’s taxonomy ranks defenses from worst to best, in four categories.

At the bottom of the pile are the unhealthiest, or “psychotic,” adaptations—like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania—which, while they can serve to make reality tolerable for the person employing them, seem crazy to anyone else. One level up are the “immature” adaptations, which include acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy. These aren’t as isolating as psychotic adaptations, but they impede intimacy. “Neurotic” defenses are common in “normal” people. These include intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into objects of formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one’s feelings); and repression, which, Vaillant says, can involve “seemingly inexplicable naïveté, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected sense organ.” The healthiest, or “mature,” adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship)."

I mostly function at the "normal" level but I remembering that the goal is the "mature" level helps me on a daily basis.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/7439/

I don't want to be me right now

so I can I possibly want you?

5 and a half months in...

...and I finally found my theme song for 2010. "In a Mellow Tone" sung by Ella Fitzgerald perfectly evokes the way I’ve been living and the way I plan to carry out the rest of this 24th season of my life.

In a mellow tone
Feeling fancy free
And I'm not alone
I've got company

Everything's ok
The live long day
With this mellow song
I can't go wrong

In a mellow tone
That's the way to live
If you mope and groan
Something's gotta give

Just go your way
And laugh and play
There's joy unknown
In a mellow tone

(scat)
In a mellow tone
(bridge)

In a mellow tone
Feeling fancy free
And I'm not alone
I've got company

Everything's ok
The live long day
With this mellow song
I can't go wrong

In a mellow tone
That's the way to live
If you mope and groan
Something's gotta give

Just go your way
And laugh and play
There's joy unknown
In a mellow tone
In a mellow tone
In a mellow tone

They are the type...

...to charm the pants off the rest of us, if we're lucky.

Quotables from The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Reading this was like falling in love. It made me want to be a better person.

"As for me, I implore fate to give me the opportunity to see beyond myself and truly meet someone." Renee, page 145

"Never in my life have I felt so at ease. How can I explain? For the first time, I feel utterly trusting, even though I am not alone. Even with Manuela, to whom I would gladly entrust my life, I do not have this feeling of absolute security that comes when one is sure that understanding is mutual. Entrusting one's life is not eh same as opening one's soul, and although I love Manuela like a sister, I cannot share with her the things that constitute the tiny portion of meaning and emotion that my incongruous existence has stolen from the universe." Renne, page 225. I love the sentiment of this whole passage but this, THIS is genius: "the tiny portion of meaning and emotion that my incongruous existence has stolen from the universe." That phrase is the essence of human individualism, aspiration, and meaning.

"What is both confusing and astounding about Kakuro Ozu is that he combines a sort of childish enthusiasm and candor with the attentiveness and kindliness of an old sage. I am not accustomed to such a relationship with the world; it seems to me that he views it with indulgence and curiosity, whereas the other human beings I know display either weariness and kindness (Manuela), ingenuity and kindness (Olympe) or arrogance and cruelty (eveyone else). Such a combination of eagerness, lucidity and magnanimity is delightfully unusual." Renee, page 228

"This pause in time, within tine... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is possible only with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship... When did I first feel so blissfully relaxed in the presence of a man?" Renee, page 277 (THIS IS LOVE)

Andre Benjamin

Outkast's "sensitive half" is my celebrity pass. All Dre would have to do is ask.

What comes out when I try to write fiction

1: “You can’t base a story on a movie that was originally based on a story.”

2: “Unless the original story can be improved upon. Why else would they have made the movie? Think Devil Wears Prada. Awful book, great movie.”

1: “Not an awful book, just poorly written.”

2: “whoa. I think my socks were just knocked off. You’ve read it? And you liked it? That first whoa? Gonna have to repeat it.”

1: “As a pop culture specialist I have to be on top of my chick lit.”

2: “So you’re a pop culture specialist now? I feel like I don’t know you at all.”

1: “Sometimes I like to shop at Enigmas ‘R Us.”

2: “Seriously? Did you seriously just say that? Please please never ever do that again.”

1: “Don’t pretend like you didn’t like it.”

2: “No pretending here love. O, did you hear that? Love! I think she just decided that I’m British! British… I didn’t realize it but I was hoping I would be British. Though Brazilian would have be fun too.”

1: “Naw, Brazil’s too cool to be cool nowadays.”

2: “Yea, you’re right. Funny how a whole nation is suddenly trendy.”

1: “Yea. Remember when it was Jamaica? Whatever happened to that?”

2: “o yea. Hmm, this would be a good time for her to have us discuss afro-spiced Caribbean culture and it’s exoticification throughout the world.”

1: “Don’t get ahead of yourself there. That would move us towards themes of race, politics, globalization and God knows what else. We still don’t know if she’s basing us on a movie or a book or some recycled combination of both.”

2. “True.”

1. “So what do you think? Are we gonna be hackneyed?”

2. “Maybe? I don’t know. I do know that this dialogue’s not strong enough to stand without adjectives. What’s she doing?”

1. “Without adjectives? What do you mean?”

2. “You know the whole, ‘He said with a smirk’ or ‘She said with mock distress’. I don’t think we’re witty enough to do without them.”

1. “Speak for yourself. I for one thrive on stand-alone quotes. Also, as a pop culture specialist you should know that dialogue without adjectives equals hipness. And I’m willing to forgo wit for hipness any day.”

2. “Style over substance, eh? Typical.”

1. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

2. “Nothing, nothing.”

1. “Come on, tell me. I want to know what you were going to say.”

2. “But I don’t think I want to tell you.”

1. “Seriously? I hate it when people do that! Insinuate something about you and then refuse to complete the thought. I thought you were better than that.”

2. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

1. “See? She said with a smirk.”

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"

Spoken by the inimitable and inspirational Mae West. I love her for the quote above and for the ones that follow.



"All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else."

"Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly."

"Don't keep a man guessing too long - he's sure to find the answer somewhere else."

"Keep a diary and one day it will keep you."

"I believe that it's better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked."

"I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing."

"Look your best - who said love is blind?"

"Love isn't an emotion or an instinct - it's an art."

From Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers

Memorable passages:

"I wish I could make out Stone's students better. I can see how they disturb him. But I just can't see them in any detail. They're hiding in the sullen, shine performance of youth." The narrator's attempt to describe the youth in the protagonist's creative writing class (page 7).

"From where I sit, the whole human race did something stupid when young-- pulled some playful stunt that damaged someone. The secret of survival is forgetting. If evolution favored conscience, everything with a backbone would have hanged itself from the ceiling fan eons ago, and invertebrates would once again be running the place." (page 19)

"As they talked, the counselor's words turned playful, to match the immigrant's. Something contagious about the Algerian. Her delight was irresistible: like being seven, and ten hours from turning eight. Like being eighteen, out on the highway when a tune with a hook like resurrection came on the radio for the first time. Like being twenty-nine, and having the doctor tell you that company is coming." On delight, (page 86). I like this for two reasons 1) My best friend often has a similar effect on people, one of the many reasons why I love her and 2) great use of simile here, each evocation of delight he employs would resonate strongly with almost anyone.

I'm sure there are many more in this book but I stopped noting the interesting passages pretty early on because I began doubting the author's perspective pretty early on. Towards the end of the book I came to believe in him again but by then it was too late to go back and re-mark things that might have been interesting to my re-engaged self.

Page numbers from the first hardcover edition, published in 2009 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Link to Generosity's Powell's page: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-9780374161149-0

Generation Y? Z?

I think young people are more poetically inclined, i think-- you see it on the internet, that they really want to connect. Connection is what being alive is, they want to feel seen and, they want to create a sense of themselves and intimacy with others. My advice to them would be exactly the same, it's just to educate yourself, figure out who you are. The other really strong thing that is really needed is you need to build up your enthusiasm so that it is higher than your fear.

~Jane Compton, director of Bright Star on poetry and how to be alive as youth in our day and in that of John Keats. Makes me want to see her new film

Swedish proverb

Love me when I least deserve because that is when I truly need it.

From The Art of Seduction

Sounds about right:

Our personalities are often molded by how we are treated: if a parent or
spouse is defensive or argumentative in dealing with us, we tend to respond
the same way. Never mistake people's exterior characteristics for reality, for
the character they show on the surface may be merely a reflection of the
people with whom they have been most in contact, or a front disguising
its own opposite. A gruff exterior may hide a person dying for warmth; a
repressed, sober-looking type may actually be struggling to conceal uncon-
trollable emotions. That is the key to charm—feeding what has been
repressed or denied.

"People are becoming more and more accustomed to not taking responsibility for their actions"

The quote in the title line comes from an article in the Sunday New York Times that attempts to answer the question of whether or not happiness is a contagious condition. This post will have nothing to do with the subject of that article but only with the quote, by a 75-year-old woman named Eileen, that rang true to me. That quote strikes me as particularly poignant and perhaps the cause of much of what is wrong with the world according to progressives from coast to coast. Eileen was referring to American obesity in this particular instance but this causal analysis could also be applied to global warming, excessive human waste, increased levels of violence, increasing passivity of civil society, and even such social phenomena as racism, classism, and sexism. Studies are increasingly coming out that show links between factors external to the self and bad habits/ negative traits that allow people to excuse their behavior as the result of their inferior childhoods, predisposed genetic traits, or even ignorance, etc.* This is happening as the internet simultaneously provides unprecedented opportunities to separate one's self from one's self (there's probably a psychological term that could communicate this idea more concisely... maybe something akin to "cognitive dissonance"). Less stringent religious practice is probably also a contributor to the state of affairs that Eileen describes (not that I think that this is at all a negative thing).

* Saying that people blame negative behavior on ignorance needs explanation. Information is more easy to come by than ever but it is this very availability that makes it easy to claim ignorance. People often do not want to contend with the intimidating wealth of knowledge (from competing sources) that make up our information sources.

Update: Upon re-reading I'm not sure if any of the above makes sense but I'm going to leave it because, why not? It felt profound at the time of writing...

There were 8 of them. Their uniforms were from different military branches but all shared a common spirit in tailoring: clean lines, two colors, cut to accentuate hard angular bodies. The men's faces matched their uniforms. In fact, every detail of their persons matched all others. Their faces were firm, their mouths were set lines, their spines were erect, their legs moved precisely and their eyes focused on nothing but the air in front of them. They were one body as every movement made was mirrored by all others at precisely the same time and in precisely the same way. They were each other, they were no one at all. They were only men in that moment; they were timeless and nameless, they were servants of their country holding up a man who had been the same.

While watching American servicemen hold up Senator Ted Kenendy's coffin at his funeral this past weekend, I suddenly understood the mindset of those who decide to join the military. I'm one of those people who takes my individuality seriously. Growing up I remember countless times when I would feel viscerally violated when I thought my freedom to self-determine was being infringed upon. If I wanted to do something unconventional (like run around shirtless like the boys though I was elementary school-, not toddler-aged) then I did and passionately defended my position to anyone who thought I should act differently. I've always been the kind of person who takes pride in doing what I want to do, regardless of societal pressures or immediate consequences. Because of my personality, I had always been dumbfounded by any man or woman who would willingly give up any semblance of personal freedom to join an organization that made them physically uncomfortable and psychologically servile.

That's how I felt until I saw these 8 men hold up a senator last week. While watching their rigid stature and focused gazes as they held up a flag-covered coffin, I sensed what had confounded me about the military until that point. These men had given up themselves, their earthly semblances of individuality (which more often than not seem arbitrary) for a more tangible sense of shared humanity. These men gave themselves up to be a part of something that, to them, is bigger than individual will. From their clothes to their hair, from their posture to their language, these men were each other, each others' fathers, and each others' grandfathers. As I watched them, I saw how they might find comfort in learning to become mirrors of the men around them. I saw how the military could be a manifestation of the idea of equality. I had always got that many people find honor, truth and a sense of purpose in serving; I got that they felt that being in the military is to serve a greater good and, judging by the number of bumper stickers, that they must get an almost spiritual comfort from military service. But seeing the men who carried Senator Kennedy's coffin, I understood a deeper reason for donning a uniform: serving brings a daily comfort of being freed from being an individual. I sensed that military men must get personal comfort in giving up the pressure of personality, the all too difficult act of fashioning a self that separates one from the selves of others.

Looking Back

I wish I could go to college now that I am a full person and not a shell of mistrust and uncertainty. Yes, because I think I would have made a far superior academic showing now than I did then and yes, because I would have taken classes and taken advantage of resources that suited my real interests rather than interests that I thought I should have. But mostly because college is an unparallelled opportunity to get to know people who are different than one but who are, by virtue of their age and station in life, at their most committed to getting to know others at a deep level. Or even at a not so deep level. Either way, merely being in the presence of others at a time of mutual openness is a beautiful thing. If one accepts that knowing others is the richest part of being alive then college is almost decadent in its offerings of people to know and love. I miss it.

From On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Memorable passages:

"Here were people, friends. A boy called Ron, of delicate build whose movements were tidy and ironic, who liked to be clean, who liked things Japanese. A girl called Daisy, tall and solid like a swimmer, with an all-American ingenue face, sandy hair and more of a salty manner than she required, given her looks. Daisy liked eighties romantic comedies and Kevin Bacon and thrift-store handbags. Hannah was red-headed and freckled, rational, hard-working, mature. She liked Ezra Pound and making her own clothes. Here were people. Here were tastes and buying habits and physical attributes." (page 210-- There's a side of me that feels that this description detailing the lightness of individual ego rings true)

"And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared." From page 211, when Zora joins her friends after travelling to meet them, alone.

"He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away." Jerome, on his siblings (page 236). The sentiment could be extended to parents as well. I love this and on my least alienated days, I feel this towards my own towers of absolute love.

"It is on journeys like this-- where one is so horribly misunderstood-- that you find yourself longing for home, that place where you are entirely understood, for better or for worse. Kiki was home. He needed to find her." page 307. exactly what I feel about romantic love. A good articulation of what I'm searching for as I search for my Kiki.

Page numbers from the 2006 Penguin edition with the pink cover

Atlanta

Am immediate burst of humidity and the overwhelming smell of family were the unneeded clues that hinted at today's big event: I am home.