Vocab Practice (Friday Life #3)

When I was a junior in high school, I decided that I was going to be the smartest kid on my block, and I was going to be morally righteous.  I started examining everything I had once taken for granted and relearning how to live.  I grew up really religious (Baptist with a very southern flair) and had given up on it by my junior year.  I had sort of shut off inside and felt like I was hibernating inside.  I was bitter and had many unexamined feelings toward my upbringing and the community that I lived in.  I spent ages 11-16 dead inside, locked in a hiemal state.

"Hold your Light, 11, lead me through each gentle step, by step, by inch by loaded memory."

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed." -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)

Nirvana and Alice in Chains were the 1st key, Tool was the 2nd key, Rage Against the Machine the 3rd. Let me elaborate. Tool gave me a voice with which to critique my upbringing, after Alice in Chains and Nirvana allowed me to confront and own the wall of depression I had built around myself. Rage Against the Machine proved I had to do something for the world at large.
I will write all about this at a later time, but for now, a bit of meandering. I became fascinated with words and their meaning. I read Huxley's Brave New World and Island (still my favorite book) and Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment with a verve I'd not experienced since my early childhood conversion and acceptance of Jesus Christ into my heart. I had page after page of words and phrases I had never encountered before, which I dutifully defined, writing their meanings and where in the book I encountered them. My stepdad would quiz me with a list I brought him.

"Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone."-Czeslaw Milosz, poet and novelist (1911-2004)

The liberal dreams of immortality.

Anyway, where were we?
I've been suspended from work for a couple of days so I get more writing time.

"To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged". -Norman Mailer, author (1923-2007)

I've sniped all of these quotes from wordsmith, a daily email group that sends out an email every day with the word of the day, and it's a great way to wake up!

I vow to relive those days that have become marmoreal in hindsight. What positive memories don't? We cling to the banister, going down with the band, and only our memories of love avoid the mouldering of natural entropy. Even the dementia of old age is probably a result of this clamoring, this mendacity of mind that Robert Wright writes of.

"If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. Despair is for those who expect to live forever. I no longer do." -Erica Jong, writer (b. 1942)

So says the writer, but I will never forget the psychologist I spoke to after being diagnosed with migraine-like symptoms. In lieu of having money to afford counseling, I was given some armchair advice over the phone: "remember, nothing goes farther in our sense of well-being than a healthy dose of denial." At the time, I couldn't express how ludicrous or true this turned out to be.

Our ability to tune out truths and lies is quite possibly the most important element of human nature.