“Why should women be responsible for male desire?”
— Anne Carson, from “The Glass Essay” (via theclassicsreader)
“We have to live our natures out, the seed we call our soul unfolds over the course of a lifetime and there’s no going back on who we are—that much I’ve learned from trees.”
— Julia Alvarez, from “Locust,” The Woman I Kept to Myself (A Shannon Ravenel Book, 2011)
i reject all philosophies that subordinate the “body” to the “mind”, or which treat the body as some kind of prison for the soul. certain ancient greek belief systems, pauline doctrine, ascetic early church & desert fathers, saints in the middle ages, puritanism, rationalism, cartesian dualism, and diet culture which is a modern iteration of this tradition.
i hate these modes of belief because of the incalculable human suffering they’ve caused, and because they claim that tension - even agony - is a fundamental characteristic of a subject within their body, where there could as easily be a philosophy of peaceful coexistence among the self, the mind, the spirit, and the body. maybe we can’t know the true nature of these relationships, but the former is certainly not conducive to human flourishing and i’m inclined toward more practical pursuits than rejecting the body which instantiates me.
i say, “i am embodied, therefore i am”
me: what do i do about vagueness in my relationships? how do i know someone’s true feelings? what could possibly be the solution to this problem???
someone: just talk to them about it
me:
“I am torn and I am mended – I want everything and need nothing – I love you and I am content without you. Even so, come quickly!”
— Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent (via quotations-from-lit)
“Make up a story…For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.”—Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel Lecture in Literature
