"This Jesus Of Nazareth, As The Embodiment Of The Gospel Of Love, This 'redeemer' Bringing Salvation

“Sometimes letting go is the only way to find out who you’re meant to hold on to.”

— J. Sterling, The Perfect Game

Angela Carter, “Black Venus”, Black Venus

[Text ID: “She was like a piano in a country where everybody has had their hands cut off.”]

“Losing your appetite because you’re sad is the worst feeling ever.”

—

Rough Scribbles for a painting. Hopefully I can start this weekend. #graffiti #painting #canvas #bird #kingfisher #wings #flying #feathers

Sometimes I wish I wasn't as intuitive as I am. I literally notice everything, I feel the emotions of those around me. When something is really good I feel really good. When something is off, I can feel that energy before it even happens. Ignorance is truly bliss. I'm jealous of people who can live their lives in peace without noticing everything sometimes. This trait has helped me countless times, but it hurts me emotionally and makes my anxiety worse equally as much, if not more so. It's like being psychic. I can tell when someone is a good manipulator. I can tell when someone is being genuinely nice or when they're acting "nice" because I benefit them or when I have something they want. I see their behavior patterns, the best way to know what a person will do is based on their passed behavior (typically). I also have a really, really good memory. I wish I could just ignore my intuitiveness and not remember every little detail about everything. Shit, maybe I should be a crime detective or a lawyer or something where I could use these skills for good rather than just something that makes my brain stur, I don't know. Do any of you guys struggle with this, like to an extreme degree?

Sometimes I think this world is cruel and unjust but then I remember how I dropped my wallet when I was on the bicycle 8 years ago and a homeless man ran 6 blocks to return it to me. Sometimes I think this world is lonely and grey but then I let the rain touch my body and hear birds make their way home at evening and for a moment, just a moment- I understand why Prometheus stole fire and laid it at man's feet, why dying stars leave a trail of wishes, why I still love 6-year-old Erica I met on a summer trip a decade ago, even though I never saw her again.

Sometimes I think this world is a bad place, but then I look around me and in all its chaos and mosaic of bodies and souls and dreams, I see beauty and goodness hidden behind kind eyes and rough hands.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

She finally voiced  her deepest desires in vivid detail, she just disguised it all as a distant dream.

- G.L. Angelone

I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.

Sylvia Plath

Loneliness is a Dangerous Thing

‘Everyone knows there are forms of cruelty which can injure a man’s life without injuring his body. They are such as deprive him of a certain form of food necessary to the life of the soul.’                     - Simone Weil, The Need for Roots

Rootlessness and homelessness, though similar in nature, are also quite different. A person who is rootless may very well have a home, but does not have a sense of belonging, they identify themselves as ‘the other’. 

Since the end of World War II, migration has increased significantly with people opting to set up their life somewhere new, whether this be for a job, education, religion, or whatever opportunity this may provide. A person disentangles themselves from the ties and bonds that they have with one place and form this relationship somewhere new… this is now home.

But home for you may not always be home for the new family that you set up. I have mentioned this before in another post so I won’t go into it in too much detail, but when looking at those with extremist and ‘radical’ thoughts, we find that they are often children of those who have migrated. The parents have chosen to build home in a new foreign land and build a relationship with that place, but the relationship is not so straight forward. This relationship is a half way house between assimilating and holding onto one’s culture; the migrant chooses which parts of the new culture to adopt and which parts of their old culture to hold onto. This might vary from eating and drinking habits, clothing, social life, it could be anything. 

The child of the migrant however, having not chosen but instead having been brought up with this conflict between the two cultures feels lost. This is something I have thought about for a long time, but Arendt put it into the words I have been searching for for so long. 

The child feels a sense of rootlessness. 

Arendt argues that those who feel rootless or homeless will seek out a home for themselves at any cost, which can have disastrous consequences. 

She states that for an individual who feels rootless and homeless, often with this comes the feeling of having an existence that is not meaningful or fruitful. To find this sense of belonging, individuals often turn to exclusionary movements and groups, which actually only increases the feeling of alienation and rootlessness. Now they are in a group that only contains people such as themselves, perhaps from one place, class, religion, etc. all together feeling like outsiders, because of the absence of others of a different background. 

Arendt says that uprootedness has been ‘the curse of the modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution’.

Loneliness is a dangerous thing. When a person is lonely, when they feel their roots are not in any ground but sort of drifting from place to place, a person is not themselves. Who are we, after all, without a background against us? Just an entity, perhaps? 

‘To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul.’

“People made her tired. The way they were easy with one another, the way they seemed so natural, only made her sad.”

— Ann Patchett, The Magician’s Assistant