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Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.


Henri Frederic Amiel


#clever people #cleverness #nothing #people #recognize

You sayin' you want to go?" "Don't you?" "Hell no!" "Okay,I'll tell Matt and Jared that they can go to Paris without us." The only response was stunned silence, and I finally turned to smile at him. "Do you want to reconsider?" I asked. "The wedding's in Paris?" "Yep." His dark eyes were huge, and I could see so much in them. He was excited, almost giddy. I could see it bubbling up in him, but he was trying t stay calm and not get his hopes up. "Can we afford Paris?" "No," I said, "but it doesn't matter. Cole's footing the bill." He grabbed my shirt and pushed me back against the countertop, almost as if he was going to kiss me, but stopped short, looking into my eyes. "Are you serious?" "Would I lie to you about something like this?" "No." "Do you think I'd make it up just to tease you?" "No." "Yes." He backed up a step. "Yes what?" he asked. I could hardly keep from laughing that I'd finally managed to turn the tables on him with his own backward form of communication. "Yes, I'm absolutely serious. Cole offered to fly us all to Paris." ... His expression was so full of hope, I thought it was a good thing I hadn't tried to say no. He put his hand against my cheek and looked into my eyes. "Tell me what you want to do." All I had to do was tell him the truth. I brushed his hair out of his eyes and said, "I want to do whatever will make you happy." He smiled at me, the huge, excited smile of a child who woke up from his nap to find himself in Disneyland. "I want to go to Paris." "Okay," I said as I leaned down to kiss him. "Then you will.


Marie Sexton


#gay-romance #zach #communication

Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers. He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers--and spirit itself will stink. Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking. Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace. He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart. In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall. The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched. I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins--it wanteth to laugh.


Friedrich Nietzsche


#zarathustra #courage

Hey, look, I thought with a miserable laugh, this day just got worse.


Diana Rowland


#death

The Couple Overfloweth We sometimes go on as though people can’t express themselves. In fact they’re always expressing themselves. The sorriest couples are those where the woman can’t be preoccupied or tired without the man saying “What’s wrong? Say something…,” or the man, without the woman saying … and so on. Radio and television have spread this spirit everywhere, and we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying. What we’re plagued by these days isn’t any blocking of communication, but pointless statements. But what we call the meaning of a statement is its point. That’s the only definition of meaning, and it comes to the same thing as a statement’s novelty. You can listen to people for hours, but what’s the point? . . . That’s why arguments are such a strain, why there’s never any point arguing. You can’t just tell someone what they’re saying is pointless. So you tell them it’s wrong. But what someone says is never wrong, the problem isn’t that some things are wrong, but that they’re stupid or irrelevant. That they’ve already been said a thousand times. The notions of relevance, necessity, the point of something, are a thousand times more significant than the notion of truth. Not as substitutes for truth, but as the measure of the truth of what I’m saying. It’s the same in mathematics: Poincaré used to say that many mathematical theories are completely irrelevant, pointless; He didn’t say they were wrong – that wouldn’t have been so bad. (Negotiations)


Gilles Deleuze


#negotiations #the-couple-overfloweth #communication

How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present


Robert Walser


#class-warfare #courage #cowardice #inequality #money

Underlying the attack on psychotherapy, I believe, is a recognition of the potential power of any relationship of witnessing. The consulting room is a privileged space dedicated to memory. Within that space, survivors gain the freedom to know and tell their stories. Even the most private and confidential disclosure of past abuses increases the likelihood of eventual public disclosure. And public disclosure is something that perpetrators are determined to prevent. As in the case of more overtly political crimes, perpetrators will fight tenaciously to ensure that their abuses remain unseen, unacknowledged, and consigned to oblivion. The dialectic of trauma is playing itself out once again. It is worth remembering that this is not the first time in history that those who have listened closely to trauma survivors have been subject to challenge. Nor will it be the last. In the past few years, many clinicians have had to learn to deal with the same tactics of harassment and intimidation that grassroots advocates for women, children and other oppressed groups have long endured. We, the bystanders, have had to look within ourselves to find some small portion of the courage that victims of violence must muster every day. Some attacks have been downright silly; many have been quite ugly. Though frightening, these attacks are an implicit tribute to the power of the healing relationship. They remind us that creating a protected space where survivors can speak their truth is an act of liberation. They remind us that bearing witness, even within the confines of that sanctuary, is an act of solidarity. They remind us also that moral neutrality in the conflict between victim and perpetrator is not an option. Like all other bystanders, therapists are sometimes forced to take sides. Those who stand with the victim will inevitably have to face the perpetrator's unmasked fury. For many of us, there can be no greater honor. p.246 - 247 Judith Lewis Herman, M.D. February, 1997


Judith Lewis Herman


#abuse-of-power #abused-women #attacks #bravery #courage

On a long journey to Glen-Stone Isailed into its shade there before me she proudly shone my decision was already made. A lass who bore the light of the town her fur of ivory thread how she danced is stuck in my crown and back to this glen my boat led. Twenty some seasons have since passed since her eyes and mine both met through lands unnamed and wildly vast my blade slaying every threat Wolf, hawk, fox, and snake can't stand in my way my body is weak and it may break, but not today. Living in blackness wrought with fright my steel shattered facing the foes dusks and dawns darker than night my fallen companions in rows Life spilled past me staining the ground mylimbs growing ever so cold above villians let out a cackiling sound telling me i'd never grow old One dance and one mouse played in my mind calling me back from the doom the courage to carry on i did find to raise me out of my tomb Wolf, hawk, fox, and snake can't stand in my way my body is weak and it may break though not today Battered and bruised i stood to my paws raised what little i owned predators growled caring not for my cause of the mouse that shone light off Glen-stone Wolf, hawk, fox, and snake can't tand in my way my body is weak and it may break though not today. -The Ballad Of The Ivory Lass


David Petersen


#lass #love #courage

Mzatal gave a decisive nod. “I will manage this. It cannot continue to interfere with his work. Too much is at stake.” I raised an eyebrow. “How do you intend to manage it?” “I will tell him the truth and outline the consequences.” I was surprised Mzatal didn’t shrivel away from the look I gave him. “Dude. Seriously? You expect him to stop crushing on me because you forbid it?” Mzatal frowned, contemplative. “Perhaps not ideal given the entanglement of human emotions, though there is no time for it to drag on,” he said, as if he actually knew what he was talking about. “If he knows you have no interest and sees how his distractions have affected his work, he will subside enough for now.” My withering look became glacial. “Boss, you’re completely awesome in many ways, but you are so off-base with this it’s not even funny.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ve already ramped ‘No Interest’ up to eleven on the dial and, at this point, he doesn’t care if his work suffers.” I took a big gulp of coffee, then ran my fingers through my tangled hair. “Let me deal with it. Normally I’m not into direct confrontation with this sort of shit, but there’s isn’t enough time for it to fizzle out on its own.” Mzatal regarded me with that damned unreadable mask which he’d slipped on as I was talking. Great. Lords weren’t much on being told they were wrong, but it had to be said.


Diana Rowland


#humour #idris #mzatal-kara #dating

It had been a fix-up, a blind date set up by a well-meaning skinny coworker who had no clue that most men in Southern California placed overweight women in the same category as serial killers and believed them worthy of the same punishment - the death penalty. I finally had given in to her assurances that this man and I had a lot in common. Which, sadly, we did. But I saw the look of disappointment on his face when he entered the restaurant and realized that I was his date. I had seen that look before. It was unmistakable disgust encased in civility. Like a dead fish wrapped in clean white butcher paper, the covering kept your hands from being soiled but could not stop the stink.


Sue Ann Jaffarian


#dating