“We dance to the beat of another recycled rebellion… of consolidating assets… of another crowd losing it… another voice breaking up in static…”
Nothing can prepare you for it: the voice on the other end…. And it keeps coming—and it keeps coming—and it keeps coming ‘till the day it stops.
"Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest markets would skyrocket. Instability would occur in financial markets and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations. It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility — two things that set us apart in much of the world."
— Ronald Regan, 1987
"So the boring collect—I mean all disrespect—in the neighborhood bars I’d once dreamt I would drink. New York, I love you but you’re freaking me out…"
— LCD Soundsystem
"To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much sat-upon object which it is to her."
— William James
"Mental illnesses are nothing more or less than physical illnesses, that happen to impair psychological functioning."
— Daniel Gilbert
Brain
I was traversing the maze of my brain: corridors, corners, strange, narrow caverns, dead ends.
Then all at once my being like this in my brain, this sense of being my brain became unbearable to me.
I began to wonder in dismay if the conclusion I’d long ago come to that there can be nothing
that might reasonably be postulated as the soul apart from body and mind was entirely valid.
Why, as many I cherish—Herbert, Hopkins, Weil—have believed, shouldn’t there be a substance
neither thought nor matter that floats above both, lifts from both as mist at dawn lifts from a lake?
Here was only this cavern registering the hours of my life, and dissipating, misplacing all but so few.
If I could posit a soul, might this be its task: to salvage in a convincing way all that I’d lost?
Would that be what’s meant by consolation? And if there were a soul, and its consolations,
would I perceive the mist and lake of other souls, too? Would I love them more than I already do?
And the lake, and the dawn, and the rudderless barque I picture there: would I love all that more, too?
And the mountain behind, scribbled with trees? And the lace of the dark seeping down, seeping down?
—Brain, C.K. Williams
(Source: The Atlantic)
