Metaphor Sad Quotes

You do realize you just mixed Disney metaphors, right? Disney metaphors. Wow, Calla, now I'm just sad for you.

Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself,' said Denethor. 'Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse lay in the dregs?

I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone.

She was a mind floating in an ocean of confusion.

Trees lose their leaves in blizzards like these.

It makes me really sad that women have been ejected from the seat of their power in this society in terms of what happens around childbirth. In other parts of the world, there are places where women can't drive a car, but they're still in charge of childbirth... The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women do. I find it metaphorically resonant that a pregnant woman looks like she's just sitting on a couch, but she's actually exhausting herself constructing a human being. The laborious process of growing a human is analogous to how 'women's work' is seen.

As a counterpoint to sociopathy, the condition of narcissism is particularly interesting and instructive. Narcissism is, in a metaphorical sense, one half of what sociopathy is. Even clinical narcissists are able to feel most emotions are strongly as anyone else does, from guilt to sadness to desperate love and passion. The half that is missing is the crucial ability to understand what other people are feeling. Narcissism is a failure not of conscience but of empathy, which is the capacity to perceive emotions in others and so react to them appropriately. The poor narcissist cannot see past his own nose, emotionally speaking, and as with the Pillsbury Doughboy, any input from the outside will spring back as if nothing had happened. Unlike sociopaths, narcissists often are in psychological pain, and may sometimes seek psychotherapy. When a narcissist looks for help, one of the underlying issues is usually that, unbeknownst to him, he is alienating his relationships on account of his lack of empathy with others, and is feeling confused, abandoned, and lonely. He misses the people he loves, and is ill-equipped to get them back. Sociopaths, in contrast, do not care about other people, and so do not miss them when they are alienated or gone, except as one might regret the absence of a useful appliance that one has somehow lost.

When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He's written "He dies." That's all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is "He dies." It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with "He dies." And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it's only natural to be sad, but not because of the words "He dies." but because of the life we saw prior to the words.

No! he wanted to cry out. No, Tania, please come back. What can I leave her with, what can I say, what one word can I leave with her, for her? What one word for my wife? "Tatiasha," Alexander called after her. God, what was the curator's name...? She glanced back. "Remember Orbeli-

My months are spent preparing for the fall.

The real artist with no tear in his eye and no sadness in his heart, puts the pages in the fire and does it again!" "All art is a metaphor it's by telling you one thing when your mean something else. The Old Man in the Sea is not about fishing!" "Writing a book is like torture that you don't know, but after it’s done and there it is. It's a joy like unlike anything else, I think it's the closest that a man can come to knowing what is feels like to have a baby.

I don't think I can marry, I'm not fit for it, I'm not real enough. That's the trouble. I'm a puppet that's realised what's wrong with itself and it's horrible. I'm propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I'm propped up crying in a corner.

Because I am eighteen I know a great many things; for example, I know that sticks and stones are indeed very effective mechanisms with which to break bones; however, a few poorly aim (or sadly, well-aimed) words can have some's metaphorical eye out and therefore one out not wave one's words about willy-nilly.

My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, 'holiness' is, metaphorically, frozen stiff in his veins: and at that a corrupted formula - i.e. legalism. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the sharpest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness.

a blossom past its perfection, shedding petals like a sad metaphor

Night descends as a falling blanket. The city is a constellation of lights, each one representing a hand that turned the lightbulb. A hand attached to a mind containing a universe of memories and myths; a natural history of loves and wounds. Life everywhere. Pulsing, humming. A great wheel turning. A light blinks out here, one replaces it there. Always dying. Always living. We survive until we don’t. All of this ending and beginning is the only thing that is infinite.

I am always looking for rainbows, literally and metaphorically, only that I am starting to think that I could learn more from my journey if, from time to time, I were brave enough to stay in the rain longer.

Our star life, yours with mine. As someone said over dinner once, each of us is given at least nine versions of our lives, some we guzzle, others we take tiny, timid sips from, and some our lips never touch.

If you know your mom is a great killer, and you think of your mom as a great killer, and you know she would kill for you, not just metaphorically, but really end lives for you, without hesitation, you don't want to make her sad and worried because how can you repay her for all the things she's willing to do? You can't.

I have no interest in dating,” Sylvie said. “Dating is about getting dressed up and pretending you’re a pretty girl who thinks about nothing but marriage and babies. I don’t think about those things, and it makes me sad to pretend to be something I’m not. Oh—” She propped herself up on her elbow so she could see her sister in the dim light. “I thought of a metaphor today while I was shelving. Imagine that I’m a house, and when I find my great love, I’ll become the entire world. Our love will show me so much more than I’m able to see on my own.

When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He’s written “He dies.” That’s all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is “He dies.” It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with “He dies.” And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it’s only natural to be sad, but not because of the words “He dies,” but because of the life we saw prior to the words. I’ve lived all five of my acts, Mahoney, and I am not asking you to be happy that I must go. I’m only asking that you turn the page, continue reading… and let the next story begin. And if anyone asks what became of me, you relate my life in all its wonder, and end it with a simple and modest “He died.

I was thinking about what she aid about waves, and it made me sad because I knew that her little wave was not going to last and soon she would join the sea again, and even though I know you can’t hold on to water, I still gripped her fingers a little more tightly to keep her from leaking away,

She has never been in the presence, before, of two people who are in love with each other. She feels like a stray child, ragged and cold, with her nose pressed to a lighted window. A toy-store window, a bakery window, with fancy cakes and decorated cookies. Poverty prevents her entrance. These things are for other people; nothing for her.

Birds shouldn't be able to find tears They are the definition of freedom

Jonathan Safran Foer’s 10 Rules for Writing: 1.Tragedies make great literature; unfathomable catastrophes (the Holocaust, 9/11) are even better – try to construct your books around them for added gravitas but, since those big issues are such bummers, make sure you do it in a way that still focuses on a quirky central character that’s somewhat like Jonathan Safran Foer. 2. You can also name your character Jonathan Safran Foer. 3. If you’re writing a non-fiction book you should still make sure that it has a strong, deep, wise, and relatable central character – someone like Jonathan Safran Foer. 4. If you reach a point in your book where you’re not sure what to do, or how to approach a certain scene, or what the hell you’re doing, just throw in a picture, or a photo, or scribbles, or blank pages, or some illegible text, or maybe even a flipbook. Don’t worry if these things don’t mean anything, that’s what postmodernism is all about. If you’re not sure what to put in, you can’t go wrong with a nice photograph of Jonathan Safran Foer. 5. If you come up with a pun, metaphor, or phrase that you think is really clever and original, don’t just use it once and throw it away, sprinkle it liberally throughout the text. One particularly good phrase that comes to mind is “Jonathan Safran Foer.” 6. Don’t worry if you seem to be saying the same thing over and over again, repetition makes the work stronger, repetition is good, it drives the point home. The more you repeat a phrase or an idea, the better it gets. You should not be afraid of repeating ideas or phrases. One particularly good phrase that comes to mind is “Jonathan Safran Foer.” 7. Other writers are not your enemies, they are your friends, so you should feel free to borrow some of their ideas, words, techniques, and symbols, and use them completely out of context. They won’t mind, they’re your friends, just like my good friend Paul Auster, with whom I am very good friends. Just make sure you don’t steal anything from Jonathan Safran Foer, it wouldn’t be nice, he is your friend. 8. Make sure you have exactly three plots in your novel, any more and it gets confusing, any less and it’s not postmodern. At least one of those plots should be in a different timeline. It often helps if you name these three plots, I often use “Jonathan,” “Safran,” and “Foer.” 9. Don’t be afraid to make bold statements in you writing, there should always be a strong lesson to be learned, such as “don’t eat animals,” or “the Holocaust was bad,” or “9/11 was really really sad,” or “the world would be a better place if everyone was just a little bit more like Jonathan Safran Foer.” 10. In the end, don’t worry if you’re unsuccessful as a writer, it probably wasn’t meant to be. Not all of us are chosen to become writers. Not all of us can be Jonathan Safran Foer.

Because it is the hardness of the floor, and the abrupt halt in momentum, and the unyielding nature of the surface, that causes a thing to crack. Even if it is not that thing's fault. And then we talk about this thing being broken, or it needing to be fixed, and not what part of the floor has played in the matter. Never the part about the floor being a constant threat. Even if it is a nice floor. Even if everybody wants one just like it.

Within her there seems to be a rattling; from little stones, from stalks, from days when it never quits. Inside her the sky empties itself in slow, unresolving fashion, and there isn’t anything worth naming in the fridge.

The sad truths I've been taught by the families of the dead are these: seeing is believing; knowing is better than not knowing; to name the hurt returns a kind of comfort; the grief ignored will never go away. For those whose sons and daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers and friends went off alive and never did return, the worst that can happen has already happened. The light and air of what is known, however difficult, is better than the dark. The facts of death, like the facts of life, are required learning.

I am sunk in the wreck of myself . . . I live in myself like a mouse inside a ruin.

All night you waited for morning, all morning for afternoon, all afternoon for night; and still the longing sings. Oh, paper bird with folded wings.

We don't have to be anywhere. The party we left and the one we were headed to are probably over.

He had literally plummeted from the sky that morning, and yet this was the farthest he had ever fallen.

It’s not like I had some utterly poignant, well-lit memory of a healthy father pushing a healthy child and the child saying higher higher higher or some other metaphorically resonant moment. The swing set was just sitting there, abandoned, the two little swings hanging still and sad from a grayed plank of wood, the outline of the seats like a kid’s drawing of a smile.

Can a nation really suffer? Has a nation eyes, hands, senses, affections and passions? If you prick it, can it bleed? Obviously not. If it is defeated in war, loses a province, or even forfeits its independence, still it cannot experience pain, sadness or any other kind of misery, for it has no body, no mind, and no feelings whatsoever. In truth, it is just a metaphor.

Heartache is a real thing. It’s not a metaphor or a term saved for shitty poetry, but I never knew that until I felt it in my body. I’d been sad before: lonely, scared … depressed, too. I’d known plenty of regrets and failures, but I had never felt anything this dark and heavy pressing into my chest. Every cliché about sorrow is true. You really do feel like you’re drowning.

We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours forever—the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgody. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen. But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow.

It’s a sad reality, but in our relationships as a species, we treat each other as objects to be owned and possessed. But once we do manage to cage or “secure” our partners to “be our everything,” we suffer horribly. Once we metaphorically capture that beautiful bird we were initially attracted to, we feel guilty every time the bird chirps: we are reminded that we’ve taken away the very thing that made the bird so beautiful in the first place.

The clear liquid in our eyes is seawater and therefore there are fish in our eyes, seawater being the natural medium of fish. Since blue and green are the colours of the richest seawater, blue and green eyes are the fishiest. Dark eyes are somewhat less fecund and albino eyes are nearly fishless, sadly so. But the quantity of fish in an eye means nothing. A single tigerfish can be as beautiful, as powerful, as an entire school of seafaring tuna. That science has never observed ocular fish does nothing to refute my theory; on the contrary, it emphasizes the key hypothesis, which is: love is the food of eye fish and only love will bring them out. So to look closely into someone's eyes with cold, empirical interest is like the rude tap-tap of a finder on an aquarium, which only makes the fish flee. In a similar vein, when I took to looking at myself closely in mirrors during the turmoil of adolescence, the fact that I saw nothing in my eyes, not even the smallest guppy or tadpole, said something about my unhappiness and lack of faith in myself at the time. ...I no longer believe in eye fish in [i]fact[/i], but still do in metaphor. In the passion of an embrace, when breath, the win, is at its loudest and skin at its saltiest, I still nearly think that I could stop things and hear, feel, the rolling of the sea. I am still nearly convinced that, when my love and I kiss, we will be blessed with the sight of angelfish and sea-horses rising to the surface of our eyes, these fish being the surest proof of our love. In spite of everything, I sill profoundly believe that love is something oceanic.

It Rained for Two Days Straight Yesterday, Ryan told me his grandfather was admitted to the hospital. It was raining the way it rains in the movies, like whoever does the dishes left the faucet running, heavy drops polishing everything in the city dark. We ran from one drooling awning to the next, quicker, then slower, quicker, slower. If one had watched from the sky, our bodies would have looked like two small needles being pulsed forward by some invisible machine, stitching the streets together. Today, Patric was left by a girl he did not love but did not not love. He told me it was impossible to imagine himself both alone and whole. It was still raining--the sky's silly metaphor for sadness, untimely, startling, the way it makes the whole world more honest. Death is like this, too. Heartache, also. The sudden absence of what was there but now not. I touched Patrick's shoulder, attempting to pass my human to his. I sent Ryan a poem. I cannot do more than this art of bearing witness, to be both the bucket and the mirror, to say, yes, you are here but I am here also, to say you won't be here forever, or to say nothing and just walk beside each other in the rain.

Sex is a metaphor for everything else and everything is a metaphor for sex as well. Because sex is a coming together of two weather patterns, two separate countries, two entities in a conscious state of potentially blissful crisis. Or chaos, or harmony. You’re not quite sure what’s going to happen, but it is the most catastrophic, exciting, and weakening thing that can happen to us. If we are personally involved in it, every fiber of our being is made self-conscious, or is encourages to unify on some level with others. We are delicate. We bring our damage to sexuality, we bring our hopes, we bring our self-image, we bring our world-image, we bring what we believe we are/what we believe we aren’t, our blind spots, our prejudices, our sadness. Everything comes out. A lot of people are left wanting, and confusing, and having the idea that their body is like an unloved apartment building; it’s up for grabs and it’s of absolutely no worth. If we feel that way about ourselves and if we feel that way about others, then of course, sex is nothing more than a lot of rubbing and some kind of release. But the more we are, the more we can feel, the more we can empathize, the more human we are.

The symmetry of it all, or was it the emptied, seemingly ransacked neatness of his room, tied a knot in my throat. It reminded me less of a hotel room when you wait for the porter to help you take your things downstairs after a glorious stay that was ending too soon, than of a hospital room after all your belongings have been packed away, while the next patient, who hasn't been admitted yet, still waits in the emergency room exactly as you waited there yourself a week earlier. This was a test run for our final separation. Like looking at someone on a respirator before it's finally turned off days later.

Penemue’s thing was knowing all that was written. That included the abstract, metaphorical writing of one’s deeds on their soul. And with Penemue’s perfect memory it meant he could tell you everything about you, your parents, your extended family and all your relatives going back to the beginning of time with an eerie precision. Sadly, Penemue’s thing tended to freak the hell out of people. 

Gusts of fiery winds blow, blasting a furnace of heat. The air rings with the shrill screams of my beloved carnations. Rising and falling, they shed their flower heads upon the worn, foot trodden dirt. Staring up, their heads smile sadly, their petals shedding tears. Rolling across the planks, they reach out for me. The carnation flower's scent is fragrant in the breeze. It wakes me so I escape the dark world of dreams.

Joy and sadness, vivacity and obtuseness are data of introspection, and when we invest landscapes or other people with these states, it is because we have observed in ourselves the coincidence between these internal perceptions and the external signs associated with them by the accidents of our constitution. Perception thus impoverished becomes purely a matter of knowledge, a progressive noting down of qualities and of their most habitual distribution, and the perceiving subject approaches the world as the scientist approaches his experiments. If on the other hand we admit that all these ‘projections’, all these ‘associations’, all these ‘transferences’ are based on some intrinsic characteristic of the object, the ‘human world’ ceases to be a metaphor and becomes once more what it really is, the seat and as it were the homeland of our thoughts.

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s just a natural feeling. You’re not the person who discovered that feeling, so don’t go trying to patent it, okay?” I lay my fork down and look up. “A fond, old, faraway room?” “Exactly,” Oshima says. He holds his fork straight up for emphasis. “Just a metaphor, of course.

Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the tune, and not be dismayed at the 'rests.' They are not to be slurred over, not to be omitted, not to destroy the melody, not to change the keynote. If we look up, God Himself will beat the time for us. With the eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear. If we sadly say to ourselves, "There is no music in a 'rest,'" let us not forget '"there is the making of music in it." The making of music is often a slow and painful process in this life. How patiently God works to teach us! How long He waits for us to learn the lesson! - Ruskin

The person who really writes the minor work is a secret writer who accepts only the dictates of a masterpiece. Our good craftsman writes. He’s absorbed in what takes shape well or badly on the page. His wife, though he doesn’t know it, is watching him. It really is he who’s writing. But if his wife had X-ray vision she would see that instead of being present at an exercise of literary creation, she’s witnessing a session of hypnosis. There’s nothing inside the man who sits there writing. Nothing of himself, I mean. How much better off the poor man would be if he devoted himself to reading. Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it’s knowledge and questions. Writing, meanwhile, is almost always empty. There’s nothing in the guts of the man who sits there writing. Nothing, I mean to say, that his wife, at a given moment, might recognize. He writes like someone taking dictation. His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter! Excuse the metaphors. Sometimes, in my excitement, I wax romantic. But listen. Every work that isn’t a masterpiece is, in a sense, a part of a vast camouflage. You’ve been a soldier, I imagine, and you know what I mean. Every book that isn’t a masterpiece is cannon fodder, a slogging foot soldier, a piece to be sacrificed, since in multiple ways it mimics the design of the masterpiece. When I came to this realization, I gave up writing. Still, my mind didn’t stop working. In fact, it worked better when I wasn’t writing. I asked myself: why does a masterpiece need to be hidden? what strange forces wreath it in secrecy and mystery?

The painter knows, sadly enough, that experience does not suffice unto itself, has no proportion, dimension, perspective, mournfully he eats his life but is not allowed to digest it, this being reserved for others, not knowing, but who must somehow, at any sacrifice be made to know, then punished for the sight of this knowledge, by aiding it on its journey from brain to brain. It does not seem unreasonable that we invent colors, lines, shapes, capable of being, representative of existence, therefore it is not unreasonable that they, in turn, later, invent us, our ideas, directions, motivations, with great audacity, since we, ourselves having them upon our walls. What rude guests they prove to be, indeed: although paintings differ from life by energy a painter can never be a substitute for his paintings, so complete so independent as reality are they. Imagine the please they enjoy at this. They by conversion into an idea of the person, do, instantaneously destroy him. A tragic gesture that actually leads to tragedy but diabolically exists only in an absence of tragedy, nevertheless procreating it, however, they are unreasonably enough, insufficient, because they are not made of ideas, they are made of paint, all else is really us. Paintings are metaphors for reality, but instead of being an aid to realisation obscure the reality which is far more profound. The only way to circumvent painting is by absolute death.

A lot of people will ask me “Whats depression like?”. Its the same answer every time. “Its shitty...”. But you know whats its really like? Its like a bundle of dark clouds falling over your head, raining constantly. So your drenched. You cant function properly, you can’t do the things you love because your fingers slip and you mess up. Your clothes metaphorically are like your life, you try to change them, but they only stay dry for a few seconds, then its the same old story all over again. And no one, I repeat no one, wants to be near you. Your a wet, soaking, depressed and helpless kitten lost in depressions firm grip. Its like a stalker, it follows you. Everywhere you go, Its waiting for you. You can’t leave it. You can’t ignore it. Its always there. Thats what makes it so scary. You can never get away from it, unless, someone pushes those fiery and dark clouds away. If their willing to sacrifice everything just to make you happy. Even if that means taking those clouds upon themselves.

Two days later, I started my job. My job involved typing friendly letters full of happy lies to dying children. I wasn't allowed to touch my computer keyboard. I had to press the keys with a pair of Q-tips held by tweezers -- one pair of tweezers in each hand. I’m sorry -- that was a metaphor. My job involved using one of those photo booths to take strips of four photographs of myself. The idea was to take one picture good enough to put on a driver’s license, and to be completely satisfied with it, knowing I had infinite retries and all the time in the world, and that I was getting paid for it. I’d take the photos and show them to the boss, and he would help me think of reasons the photos weren't good enough. I’d fill out detailed reports between retakes. We weren't permitted to recycle the outtakes, so I had to scan them, put them on eBay, arrange a sale, and then ship them out to the buyer via FedEx. FedEx came once every three days, at either ten minutes till noon or five minutes after six. I’m sorry -- that was a metaphor, too. My job involved blowing ping-pong balls across long, narrow tables using three-foot-long bendy straws. At the far end of the table was a little wastebasket. My job was to get the ping-pong ball into that wastebasket, using only the bendy straw and my lungs. Touching the straw to the ping-pong ball was grounds for a talking-to. If the ping-pong ball fell off the side of the table, or if it missed the wastebasket, I had to get on my computer and send a formal request to commit suicide to Buddha himself. I would then wait patiently for his reply, which was invariably typed while very stoned, and incredibly forgiving. Every Friday, an hour before Quitting Time, I'd put on a radiation suit. I'd lift the wastebaskets full of ping-pong balls, one at a time, and deposit them into drawstring garbage bags. I'd tie the bags up, stack them all on a pallet, take them down to the incinerator in the basement, and watch them all burn. Then I'd fill out, by hand, a one-page form re: how the flames made me feel. "Sad" was an acceptable response; "Very Sad" was not.

I Would Like to Describe - 1924-1998 I would like to describe the simplest emotion joy or sadness but not as others do reaching for shafts of rain or sun I would like to describe a light which is being born in me but I know it does not resemble any star for it is not so bright not so pure and is uncertain I would like to describe courage without dragging behind me a dusty lion and also anxiety without shaking a glass full of water to put it another way I would give all metaphors in return for one word drawn out of my breast like a rib for one word contained within the boundaries of my skin but apparently this is not possible and just to say - I love I run around like mad picking up handfuls of birds and my tenderness which after all is not made of water asks the water for a face and anger different from fire borrows from it a loquacious tongue so is blurred so is blurred in me what white-haired gentlemen separated once and for all and said this is the subject and this is the object we fall asleep with one hand under our head and with the other in a mound of planets our feet abandon us and taste the earth with their tiny roots which next morning we tear out painfully

Wild animals enjoying one another and taking pleasure in their world is so immediate and so real, yet this reality is utterly absent from textbooks and academic papers about animals and ecology. There is a truth revealed here, absurd in its simplicity. This insight is not that science is wrong or bad. On the contrary: science, done well, deepens our intimacy with the world. But there is a danger in an exclusively scientific way of thinking. The forest is turned into a diagram; animals become mere mechanisms; nature's workings become clever graphs. Today's conviviality of squirrels seems a refutation of such narrowness. Nature is not a machine. These animals feel. They are alive; they are our cousins, with the shared experience kinship implies. And they appear to enjoy the sun, a phenomenon that occurs nowhere in the curriculum of modern biology. Sadly, modern science is too often unable or unwilling to visualize or feel what others experience. Certainly science's "objective" gambit can be helpful in understanding parts of nature and in freeing us from some cultural preconceptions. Our modern scientific taste for dispassion when analyzing animal behaviour formed in reaction to the Victorian naturalists and their predecessors who saw all nature as an allegory confirming their cultural values. But a gambit is just an opening move, not a coherent vision of the whole game. Science's objectivity sheds some assumptions but takes on others that, dressed up in academic rigor, can produce hubris and callousness about the world. The danger comes when we confuse the limited scope of our scientific methods with the true scope of the world. It may be useful or expedient to describe nature as a flow diagram or an animal as a machine, but such utility should not be confused with a confirmation that our limited assumptions reflect the shape of the world. Not coincidentally, the hubris of narrowly applied science serves the needs of the industrial economy. Machines are bought, sold, and discarded; joyful cousins are not. Two days ago, on Christmas Eve, the U.S. Forest Service opened to commercial logging three hundred thousand acres of old growth in the Tongass National Forest, more than a billion square-meter mandalas. Arrows moved on a flowchart, graphs of quantified timber shifted. Modern forest science integrated seamlessly with global commodity markets—language and values needed no translation. Scientific models and metaphors of machines are helpful but limited. They cannot tell us all that we need to know. What lies beyond the theories we impose on nature? This year I have tried to put down scientific tools and to listen: to come to nature without a hypothesis, without a scheme for data extraction, without a lesson plan to convey answers to students, without machines or probes. I have glimpsed how rich science is but simultaneously how limited in scope and in spirit. It is unfortunate that the practice of listening generally has no place in the formal training of scientists. In this absence science needlessly fails. We are poorer for this, and possibly more hurtful. What Christmas Eve gifts might a listening culture give its forests? What was the insight that brushed past me as the squirrels basked? It was not to turn away from science. My experience of animals is richer for knowing their stories, and science is a powerful way to deepen this understanding. Rather, I realized that all stories are partly wrapped in fiction—the fiction of simplifying assumptions, of cultural myopia and of storytellers' pride. I learned to revel in the stories but not to mistake them for the bright, ineffable nature of the world.

The painter knows, sadly enough, that experience does not suffice unto itself, has no proportion, dimension, perspective, mournfully he eats his life but is not allowed to digest it, this being reserved for others, not knowing, but who must somehow, at any sacrifice be made to know, then punished for the sight of this knowledge, by aiding it on its journey from brain to brain. It does not seem unreasonable that we invent colors, lines, shapes, capable of being, representative of existence, therefore it is not unreasonable that they, in turn, later, invent us, our ideas, directions, motivations, with great audacity, since we, ourselves having them upon our walls. What rude guests they prove to be, indeed: although paintings differ from life by energy a painter can never be a substitute for his paintings, so complete so independent as reality are they. Imagine the pleasure they enjoy at this. They by conversion into an idea of the person, do, instantaneously destroy him. A tragic gesture that actually leads to tragedy but diabolically exists only in an absence of tragedy, nevertheless procreating it, however, they are unreasonably enough, insufficient, because they are not made of ideas, they are made of paint, all else is really us. Paintings are metaphors for reality, but instead of being an aid to realization obscure the reality which is far more profound. The only way to circumvent painting is by absolute death.

On my last walk, I arrived at the beach just as the sun was being swallowed up by the horizon, at the edge of the sea. I allowed the twin feelings of melancholy and joy, sadness and awe to settle, and waded into the water. I dunked my head and flipped over and floated on my back. Deep breaths, eyes closed. And then I had one of those moments that we promise to remember, but always forget; one of those moments that can save our lives. It was a sense of being completely alone and completely connected. Of missing everyone and everything and nothing, absolutely nothing at all. Of being utterly bereft and entirely fulfilled. And I understood, for that moment, for that life-saving moment that I’ll soon forget, what it means to be alive. That life is a balancing act between the things we long for and the things we have, between contentment and being restless for other, for more, between gratitude and self-pity, between the draw of hope and the pull of despair. And somewhere amidst all of this, amongst the chaos of conflicting emotions that make up the human psyche, at some place that’s at its centre only in a metaphorical sense, there is a state of peace. Not neutral, because the contradictions don’t cancel each other out, but balanced. A state of being aware of the feelings on either side, but not participating in them, of feeling both the draw and the pull and staying put. Of experiencing everything and nothing. That’s how I felt, for a moment, as I floated in the sea on my back. That’s what I promised myself not to forget.

How I Got That Name Marilyn Chin an essay on assimilation I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin Oh, how I love the resoluteness of that first person singular followed by that stalwart indicative of “be," without the uncertain i-n-g of “becoming.” Of course, the name had been changed somewhere between Angel Island and the sea, when my father the paperson in the late 1950s obsessed with a bombshell blond transliterated “Mei Ling” to “Marilyn.” And nobody dared question his initial impulse—for we all know lust drove men to greatness, not goodness, not decency. And there I was, a wayward pink baby, named after some tragic white woman swollen with gin and Nembutal. My mother couldn’t pronounce the “r.” She dubbed me “Numba one female offshoot” for brevity: henceforth, she will live and die in sublime ignorance, flanked by loving children and the “kitchen deity.” While my father dithers, a tomcat in Hong Kong trash— a gambler, a petty thug, who bought a chain of chopsuey joints in Piss River, Oregon, with bootlegged Gucci cash. Nobody dared question his integrity given his nice, devout daughters and his bright, industrious sons as if filial piety were the standard by which all earthly men are measured. * Oh, how trustworthy our daughters, how thrifty our sons! How we’ve managed to fool the experts in education, statistic and demography— We’re not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning. Indeed, they can use us. But the “Model Minority” is a tease. We know you are watching now, so we refuse to give you any! Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots! The further west we go, we’ll hit east; the deeper down we dig, we’ll find China. History has turned its stomach on a black polluted beach— where life doesn’t hinge on that red, red wheelbarrow, but whether or not our new lover in the final episode of “Santa Barbara” will lean over a scented candle and call us a “bitch.” Oh God, where have we gone wrong? We have no inner resources! * Then, one redolent spring morning the Great Patriarch Chin peered down from his kiosk in heaven and saw that his descendants were ugly. One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridge Another’s profile—long and knobbed as a gourd. A third, the sad, brutish one may never, never marry. And I, his least favorite— “not quite boiled, not quite cooked," a plump pomfret simmering in my juices— too listless to fight for my people’s destiny. “To kill without resistance is not slaughter” says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death. The fact that this death is also metaphorical is testament to my lethargy. * So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin, married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong, granddaughter of Jack “the patriarch” and the brooding Suilin Fong, daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong and G.G. Chin the infamous, sister of a dozen, cousin of a million, survived by everbody and forgotten by all. She was neither black nor white, neither cherished nor vanquished, just another squatter in her own bamboo grove minding her poetry— when one day heaven was unmerciful, and a chasm opened where she stood. Like the jowls of a mighty white whale, or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla, it swallowed her whole. She did not flinch nor writhe, nor fret about the afterlife, but stayed! Solid as wood, happily a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized by all that was lavished upon her and all that was taken away!

Sages throughout history have relished the enigma that pleasure is undefined without suffering. In the words of Carl Jung: “There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” The Tao Te Ching extends the metaphor: “Difficult and easy accomplish each other, long and short form each other, high and low distinguish each other.

Quite a metaphor. The person in the most pain wins. Does that mean I get a Blue Ribbon?

Anorexics most often come from families that are dominated by perfectionism. Affluent families are often focused on self-image actualizing. Respectability and the upper class have a very special look and image to keep up. The following patterns predominate: perfectionism; nonexpression of feelings (no talk rule); a controlling, often tyrannical and rigid father; an obsessive mother, completely out of touch with her sadness and anger; a pseudointimate marriage with great pretense at looking good; great fear of being out of control in the whole family system; and enmeshment and cross-generational alliances. These factors appear in various combinations. The anorexic person takes control of the family with her starving and weight loss. She is a metaphor for what’s wrong with the family. She is rigidly controlled, denies all feelings, and is superachieving and encrusted in a wall of pretense. She becomes the family system Service Bearer and Scapegoat. Mom and Dad become more intimate as their fears for her life intensify.

Matthieu answered with a metaphor: “Think of happiness as a deep ocean. The surface may be choppy, but the bottom is always calm. Similarly, there are days when a deeply happy person may feel sad—for example, he sees people suffering—but underneath that sadness, there is a large depth of unwavering happiness.

The following behaviors describe insufficient self-esteem. When you hear any of these behaviors, it’s very likely your client has a self-esteem theme. They believe they don’t deserve or are not good enough. They wind up believing the “inner voice” — the one that keeps telling them, “You aren’t good enough”; “You don’t know enough”; “That’s for other people, not for you”; “You couldn’t possibly succeed at that”; “You have no luck — don’t even bother trying.” A corresponding metaphor: It seems like everyone else has gone to the party while you’ve chosen to stay home wishing you had gone. They overcompensate. They take excessive measures, attempting to correct or make amends for an error, weakness, or problem. For example, one parent believes the other is too strict or too lenient and goes too far the other way to make up for it. They do things for other people to make themselves feel better. While it’s always nice to do things for other people, sometimes the motive is wanting to feel better about oneself versus simply helping someone else. They compromise on things they shouldn’t. They might let go of or give up on an idea or value to please someone else. They get into or stay in toxic relationships. Relationships — whether with those at work, with friends, or with romantic partners — can be damaging to our self-esteem. Yet because they devalue themselves, they rationalize and justify that it’s okay. They tolerate unacceptable behavior. Because they believe they aren’t good enough, they allow people to say and do mean or inappropriate things to them. When they stay stuck in the way they allow others to take advantage of them, it’s usually because there’s a subtle, underlying reason they want to keep the pain and anguish with them. They might think that they will get attention or feel important, or maybe feeling sorry or sad is more familiar and comfortable. They don’t believe they deserve to be treated well.

He’s not just using me for my body,” Megan said. “He’s also using me as Prozac. Yesterday morning, Drew basically told me his life was all bleak like a black-and-white movie, and then I came into the picture and started rocking his world in Technicolor.” “That’s not using someone,” Rory said. “That’s happiness.” “No. It’s like a drug. I’m like a drug. But the effect on a guy only lasts for a while. When the drug high wears off, where does that leave me?” “I don’t think that’s…” Rory trailed off, confused. “You’ve never had a boyfriend, and you’ve never done drugs, so this is all a foreign concept to you. How can I put this in a metaphor you can understand?” Megan thought about it then went with the first idea that popped into her head, as she usually did. “I’m like cheap birthday cake. I’m the corner slice with all the icing. Drew is the greedy kid at the party. He wants me, the chunky corner piece with all the icing, but he’s going to get a stomach ache, and soon, he’s going to want his plain sandwiches again.” Rory looked down, and there was only the sound of the washer and dryer. Finally, she looked up, her eyes sad and hopeful at the same time, and said, “You’re not cake.” “But I’m not exactly Tina, am I? I’m not the marrying kind. I’ll never get a guy as good as Luca. Nobody’s going to sell out the flower shop just to take me on a date. I’m the girl they call to help them fix a flat tire.

She thought all was good. She was feeling really really happy actually. Though not surprisingly, It only took a matter of five words to make her feel as though her metaphoric beautiful wings had been torn off and shredded. Discarded in a pit among other wings that suffered the same fate. Echoes of words spoken ring through her head. Another sleepless night. Another sadness filled her heart, and where once that light was burning bright in her chest, a blown out candle remains.

Reminiscences of old, dried-over pains were no consolation in the face of this. They had the effect of cold beads of water on a hot iron - they danced and fizzled up while the room stank from their steam.

I realise I have become something I never thought possible: patriotic and proud about being an adopted Italian. In more honest moments, I realise that I might never quite be able to leave the country. That longing to leave, and the inability to pull yourself away from the bel casino, the 'fine mess', has been written about for centuries. Using the usual prostitution metaphor, one of the country's most important patriots, Massimo D'Azeglio, wrote: 'I can't live outside Italy, which is strange because I continually get angry with Italian ineptitude, envies, ignorance and laziness. I'm like one of the people who falls in love with a prostitute.' That, in fact, is precisely the feeling of living here: it is infuriating and endlessly irritating, but in the end it is almost impossible to pull yourself away. It's not just that everything is troppo bello, 'too beautiful', or that food and conversation are so good. It's that life seems less exciting outside Italy, the emotions seem muted. Stendhal wrote that the feeling one gets from living in Italy is 'akin to that of being in love', and it's easy to understand what he meant. There's the same kind of enchantment and serenity, occasionally insecurity and sadness. And writing about the country's sharp pangs of jealousy and paranoia, Stendhal knew that they exist precisely because the country's 'joys are far more intense and more lasting'. You can't have one without the other.

The clouds turned from pink to grey and that very metaphor defined my life in that very moment.

[Becoming a media mogul] would have eroded my soul and turned me into a smooth rock of sadness.

This dress was a tube of finely pleated silk, each pleat as fine as a harp string... driven by an urge she didnt question, she quickly shed her clothes and slipped the dress over her head. Knotting the belt around her waist, she went to the mirror. Her reflection stunned her. The natural elasticity of the pleats defined her curves molding like rows of vines to the contours of the land... Shauna stared at her face before her, growing leaner and far more beautiful. Unable to blink or move, she felt an unbearable sadness swinging through her. Tears began to course down her cheeks. Where did this grief come from? ... It came from a cause more terrible and one without remedy. The woman in the mirror flared her airs back at her in desperate appeal.

One autumn day when nature seemed filled with sadness she sat by a spring, freed from its earthly prison like thoughts from the imagination of a poet, looking at the fluttering of yellowed leaves as they fell from the trees. She watched the wind playing with them as Death plays with the souls of men. She gazed on the flowers and saw that they were withered and their hearts dried up and broken into little pieces. They were storing their seeds in the earth as women their trinkets and jewelry during times of war and disturbance.

It seems he cannot get near me, with my deep well of sadness, with my myopic awareness of the pain of the past and the severity of our family's dysfunction, without drinking from the well himself. Ten years later and my father's caught up with me With my eyes holding steady the reflection of all that happened, he looks into them and cannot deny the pain. The gift of burden I carry as the family truth teller is a token he willingly takes from me now. Where once I saw his tears as coins to cleanse me, too much time has passed for me to have remained in that purgatory. Our family's poison held as a ruby in my throat for so long now, I see him cry, but it's me who is under glass. No longer with a child's heart, his tears fall on barren soul.

I Would Like to Describe - 1924-1998 I would like to describe the simplest emotion joy or sadness but not as others do reaching for shafts of rain or sun I would like to describe a light which is being born in me but I know it does not resemble any star for it is not so bright not so pure and is uncertain I would like to describe courage without dragging behind me a dusty lion and also anxiety without shaking a glass full of water to put it another way I would give all metaphors in return for one word drawn out of my breast like a rib for one word contained within the boundaries of my skin but apparently this is not possible and just to say - I love I run around like mad picking up handfuls of birds and my tenderness which after all is not made of water asks the water for a face and anger different from fire borrows from it a loquacious tongue so is blurred so is blurred in me what white-haired gentlemen separated once and for all and said this is the subject and this is the object we fall asleep with one hand under our head and with the other in a mound of planets our feet abandon us and taste the earth with their tiny roots which next morning we tear out painfully

We didn’t need to read the puranas or epics, we just grew up listening to the stories narrated by our grandmothers. It caught our fancy, it fired and enriched our imagination, gave ideas and metaphors, and colour to our language! It is sad that the oral tradition kept alive by grandmothers is slowly dying! Though there are exceptions! I was pleasantly surprised when I heard my daughter-in-law sing Krishna songs in her mother tongue Gujarati, and Ashtapati while bathing her babies or when putting them to sleep!

Great writers and my mom never used food as an object. Instead it was a medium, a catalyst to mend hearts, to break down barriers, to build relationships. Mom's cooking fed body and soul. She used to quip, "If the food is good, there's no need to talk about the weather." That was my mantra for years---food as meal and conversation, a total experience. I leaned my forehead against the glass and thought again about Emma and the arrowroot. Mom had highlighted it in my sophomore English class. "Jane Fairfax knew it was given with a selfish heart. Emma didn't care about Jane, she just wanted to appear benevolent." "That girl was stupid. She was poor and should've accepted the gift." The football team had hooted for their spokesman. "That girl's name was Jane Fairfax, and motivation always matters." Mom's glare seared them. I tried to remember the rest of the lesson, but couldn't. I think she assigned a paper, and the football team stopped chuckling. Another memory flashed before my eyes. It was from that same spring; Mom was baking a cake to take to a neighbor who'd had a knee replacement. "We don't have enough chocolate." I shut the cabinet door. "We're making an orange cake, not chocolate." "Chocolate is so much better." "Then we're lucky it's not for you. Mrs. Conner is sad and she hurts and it's spring. The orange cake will not only show we care, it'll bring sunshine and spring to her dinner tonight. She needs that." "It's just a cake." "It's never just a cake, Lizzy." I remembered the end of that lesson: I rolled my eyes----Mom loathed that----and received dish duty. But it turned out okay; the batter was excellent. I shoved the movie reel of scenes from my head. They didn't fit in my world. Food was the object. Arrowroot was arrowroot. Cake was cake. And if it was made with artisan dark chocolate and vanilla harvested by unicorns, all the better. People would crave it, order it, and pay for it. Food wasn't a metaphor---it was the commodity---and to couch it in other terms was fatuous. The one who prepared it best won.

Now there’s a journey: from giving up smoking—giving up smoking because you want to protect your kids from loss for as long as possible—to arguing with their mother about the best way to tell them of your attempted suicide. They never said anything about that conversation in antenatal classes. It’s the distance that does it, of course. I got further and further away, and the girls got smaller and smaller until they were just tiny dots, and I could no longer see them, literally or metaphorically. You can’t make out their faces, can you, when they’re just tiny dots, so you don’t need to worry about whether they’re happy or sad. It’s why we can kill ants. And so after a while, suicide becomes imaginable, in a way that wouldn’t be possible if they looked into your eyes every day.

Dylan, Duende, Death and Lorca Does Bob Dylan have Duende? DUENDE dancers perform moving, unique, unrepeatable performances Does Bob Dylan have duende? Do you have duende? What is duende? Duende is a Spanish word with two meanings. A duende is a goblin or a pixie that probably lives at the bottom of the garden and gives three wishes to old ladies who deserve a break. The duende was best defined by Spain’s great poet Federico García Lorca during a lecture he gave in New York in 1929 on Andalusian music known as cante jondo, or deep voice. ‘The duende,’ he said, ‘is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment.’ The difference between a good and a bad singer is that the good singer has the duende and the bad singer doesn’t. ‘There are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned.’ Some critics say Bob Dylan does not have a great voice. But more than any other performer since the birth of recorded music, Dylan has revealed the indefinable, spine-tingling something captured in Lorca’s interpretation of duende. ‘It is an inexplicable power of attraction, the ability to send waves of emotion through those watching and listening to them.’ ‘The duende,’ he continues, ‘resembles what Goethe called the demoniacal. It manifests itself principally among musicians and poets of the spoken word, for it needs the trembling of the moment and then a long silence.’ painting off hell by Hieronymus Bosch Hell & Hieronymus Bosch Four elements can be found in Lorca’s vision of duende: irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death and a dash of the diabolical. I agree with Lorca that duende manifests principally among singers, but would say that same magic may touch us when confronted by great paintings: Picasso’s Guernica, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, the paintings of heaven and hell by Hieronymus Bosch. The duende is found in the bitter roots of human existence, what Lorca referred to as ‘the pain which has no explanation.’ Artists often feel sad without knowing why. They sense the cruel inevitability of fate. They smell the coppery scent of death. All artists live in a permanent state of angst knowing that what they have created could have been better. Death with Duende It is not surprising that Spain found a need for the word duende. It is the only country where death in the bullring is a national spectacle, the only nation where death is announced by the explosion of trumpets and drums. The bullring, divided in sol y sombre – the light and shade, is the perfect metaphor for life and death, a passing from the light into darkness. Every matador who ever lived had duende and no death is more profound than death in the bullring.

At the Afghan restaurant today I identified in myself a burbling in my reservoir of annoyance when I realized that people were going around the buffet in the wrong direction, which was, the annoyance felt, a kind of wretched incivility, a sign of our imminent plummet into lawlessness and misery. The delight is that I can identify that annoyance quickly now, and poke a finger in its ribs (I have shaken up the metaphor, you are right, how annoying), and so hopped into line with all the other deviants, and somehow we all got our food just fine. Same when Stephanie doesn’t turn on the light over the stove to cook, or leaves the light in her bathroom on, or leaves cabinet or closet doors wide open, or doesn’t tighten the lids all the way, all of which the annoyance regards as, if not an obvious sign of sociopathy, indication of some genuine sketchiness. A problem. But somehow no one ever dies of these things, or is even hurt, aside from my sad little annoyance monster, who, for the record, never smiles and always wears a crooked bow tie.

It kills you each day if it is only one way.

According to my instructions, I’m supposed to laugh at you now.” “Go ahead?” The voice managed a kind of embarrassed chuckle. More soft tapping sounds, but the voice spoke again before they finished. “I won’t give you my identity. It’s not important. Know that I am an interested party, and I want you to begin booking your travel back home. You have no particular skills. You know this. You’re a fairly standard teenage boy. You have no use but to be used.” “I know it’s fun to be cryptic, but that last thing made zero sense.” I wanted the voice to keep talking, because as I wiggled my hands, I realized the zip tie wasn’t as tight as it needed to be. “Think of yourself as a package. It’s Christmas, so picture a nicely wrapped present. Charlotte carries it around. It’s heavy in her arms, but it’s pleasing to look at it. Maybe the package talks. It’s witty. It’s flattering. It makes her feel special, and she likes that feeling. And one day Charlotte leaves it somewhere in public, and poof, it is taken from her. Charlotte is sad. Then furious. Charlotte will do anything to get her present back. Horrible things. Things that will end in her death, or imprisonment. We don’t want Charlotte to do these things.” “So in this weird children’s story you’re telling me, I’m a talking package.” I’d put my wrists between my knees, and slowly, slowly, I worked one curled hand out of its binding. “That’s a pretty stupid extended metaphor. Did you fail English class? You were more of a math person, weren’t you?

mostly dreams reject us lights go up at daybreak no reentry

And it’s more than a metaphor. It’s a physical state. Think of all the things you do in the course of a day. For most tasks, the best-case scenario is that your mind is bright, sharp, and alert. Figure out whether you’re a morning person (like me) or a night person (sadly, also like me), and schedule your tasks for that time. If you need to get up at five in the morning so you can answer all your correspondence without a foggy brain, that’s what you should do. If you need to stay late in the office so you can transcribe your notes from the meeting, that’s what you should do.

When you embark on a journey to uncover and resolve underlying conflicts or feelings, and don’t allow yourself to be fooled by any illusions of what is truly troubling you, you may learn something important about the function and purpose of your disordered eating. You may discover how it helps to distract you from the issues in your life that overwhelm you, that you haven’t yet learned how to deal with effectively. And you may discover how effectively it distracts you, moment to moment, from the fear of facing things head on, from the pain of past hurts. No wonder it can be so addictive. The relief you get, however, is only temporary. The disordered eating distracts you only temporarily from the emotional stress you are experiencing. It doesn’t do anything to make the stress go away. Although what you are doing with food distracts you from your sadness, your anger, or your fear, it doesn’t help to resolve problems. In fact, it helps to make them worse. The stress inside worsens and the disordered eating behavior increases. The real issues never do get resolved. When we decide to follow our dream of being free from disordered eating, what is

When I think about what I'd like to give him, it's satisfaction - a metaphorical rocking chair that he can sit in and enjoy. The rocking chair comes in many forms. There are the big things, like brining him in for a tour of the Olympic Village in Rio, or saying a special thank-you in front of the guests at my wedding. And there are the little things, like giving him rewards points. You know those rewards people get at the grocery store where you get discounts and free stuff when you earn enough points? My dad gets so much pleasure out of that. I makes him feel so good that I still use his phone number to get my groceries so that he can have the points. And these grocery points make him so fucking happy that it makes me sad.

Modern culture has disenchanted the world by disenchanting numbers. For us, numbers are about quantity and control, not quality and contemplation. After Bacon, knowledge of numbers is a key to manipulation, not meditation. Numbers are only meaningful (like all raw materials that comprise the natural world) when we can do something with them. When we read of twelve tribes and twelve apostles and twelve gates and twelve angels, we typically perceive something spreadsheet-able. By contrast, in one of Caldecott’s most radical claims, he insists, “It is not simply that numbers can be used as symbols. Numbers have meaning—they are symbols. The symbolism is not always merely projected onto them by us; much of it is inherent in their nature” (p. 75). Numbers convey to well-ordered imaginations something of (in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s metaphor) the inner design of the fabric of creation. The fact that the words “God said” appear ten times in the account of creation and that there are ten “words” in the Decalogue is not a random coincidence. The beautiful meaningfulness of a numberly world is most evident in the perception of harmony, whether in music, architecture, or physics. Called into being by a three-personed God, creation’s essential relationality is often evident in complex patterns that can be described mathematically. Sadly, as Caldecott laments, “our present education tends to eliminate the contemplative or qualitative dimension of mathematics altogether” (p. 55). The sense of transcendence that many (including mathematicians and musicians) experience when encountering beauty is often explained away by materialists as an illusion. Caldecott offers an explanation rooted in Christology. Since the Logos is love, and since all things are created through him and for him and are held together in him, we should expect the logic, the rationality, the intelligibility of the world to usher in the delight that beauty bestows. One

Well, not everyone believes these things exist. The things we see are not common; they should not be common knowledge. It is like the story of Santa Claus. You and I know he does not exist -- that he is a metaphor. You know this because you are a special child; you sought to discover the truth yourself. But all of the other children do not know that yet. And we've discussed that you should not tell them the truth because it is not their time to hear it. It would make them very sad without good reason. Just so, it is better for us that we do not tell people about these extra things we see." "When will they figure it out? When can I talk about it?" "Some of them will never know." Pappou paused. "They must never know. Because they will think we are different, and people sometimes do bad things to people whom they consider to be different." Lexi's legs stopped swinging. "Why?" "Why, indeed." The old man sat for a moment, his elbows propped on his knees and his chin resting on his fist. "Perhaps to make us appreciate the nicer people all the more.

Compared to other emotions (joy, sadness, anger), there is a lot of physical evidence that love is actually a concept closer to hormone activity than emotion. Biologically, love is a powerful neurotic condition. Desire to love is accompanied by sexual desire, but it is similar to hunger and thirst for hormonal reasons. When you fall in love, the brain releases several chemicals: pheromone, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, and so on. Just by hugging a loved one or simply looking at a photograph of a boyfriend, the hormone oxytocin is released in the body and acts as an analgesic for headaches. What is interesting is that if you break up, the symptoms you experience are similar to the withdrawal symptoms of drug addicts. In some cases, withdrawal from the demonstration may release a chemical that weakens the heart in the body. Biochemically, phenylethylamine , which secretes in the brain's limbic system, acts as a stimulant, a kind of natural amphetamine. The phrase love is a drug is no longer a metaphor but an explanatory note in this scene. But it takes 2 seconds to look at the opponent and take the so-called saying at first sight. In just two seconds, phenylethylamine is secreted and becomes full, stimulating the brain, making the opponent look barefaced. If you can make your opponent secrete phenylethylamine, this is the birth of XXX, a grossly outbreak of creatures. However, the secretion of phenylethylamine has a shelf life and generally does not exceed 2 years. [10] After that period, I will get back to my mind. From this time on, love has passed through the stages of chemistry and sociology. But a new fact has been announced. It is said that there are quite a couple who secrete this phenylethylamine throughout life. (...) In this case, however, it is not the same as the whole life, but the period when it is secreted like other normal couples, and the time when the secretion is diminished repeatedly. However, the cycle of this pattern is similar to the two people, so it is a good fit for a lifetime. If you think about it a little differently, you will come back bump bang for a while and then fall back to each other. On the contrary, the broken couples still have one secretion, and the other side breaks into the resting period, and the secretion side considers that the other's love has cooled, Perhaps the main pattern that a man and a woman make and break is confessing - fellowship - Confession feels that the opponent is obsessed with the pattern of departure - separation, It may be that the action of the opponent, who started the pause more quickly and began to climax at the apex of the secretion at that point, is regarded as an obsession. However, it is difficult to justify the feeling of love as a simple hormonal change. It is not possible to reveal what kind of change is happening in any situation, even if it is revealed that what kind of hormone change occurs when feeling love, and it is impossible to tell. Just as you do not secrete phenylethylamine, which is one of the most common types of phenylethylamine you encounter on the roadside, you can not say that this research has 'revealed the principles of love' and 'why you fall in love'. The latter is influenced by individual values, experience and situation, first impressions, and the conditions of the opponent.

And as for those who might have been following me, odds are I lost them long, long ago. Nothing to do but keep on driving as clearly as if I hadn't, flashing my change of lane and exit, in case there's anyone who needs to know.

I put my arm around her.  You put your arm around her.  She leans against you. And a long spell of time passes.  "Did you know that I did this exact same thing a long time ago? Right in this same spot?"  "I know," you tell her.  "How do you know that?' Miss Saeki asks, and looks you in the eyes.  "I was there then."  "Blowing up bridges?"  "Yes, I was there, blowing up bridges."  "Metaphorically."  "Of course."  You hold her in your arms, draw her close, kiss her. You can feel the strength deserting her body.  "We're all dreaming, aren't we?" she says.  All of us are dreaming.  "Why did you have to die?"  "I couldn't help it," you reply.  Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love.   Pretty much the same sort of lovemaking as the night before. But with two differences.   After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again and drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. Finally it's a part of you.  She leaves behind a damp pillow, wet with her tears. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those details of the real, there are dreams.   And everyone's living in them.