[Image: lunar surface, color-enhanced, per results of the NASA GRAIL mission.
For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
“My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps on doing bad, dumb things.”
“Your soul and your what?” he said.
“My soul and my meat,” I said.
“They’re separate?” he said.
“I sure hope they are,” I said. I laughed. “I would hate to be responsible for what my meat does.”
I told him, only half joking, about how I imagined the soul of each person, myself included, as being a sort of flexible neon tube inside. All the tube could do was receive news about what was happening with the meat, over which it had no control.
“So when people I like do something terrible,” I said, “I just flense them and forgive them.”
“Flense?” he said. “What’s flense?”
“It’s what whalers used to do to whale carcasses when they got them on board,” I said. “They would strip off the skin and blubber and meat right down to the skeleton. I do that in my head to people — get rid of all the meat so I can see nothing but their souls. Then I forgive them.”
(Kurt Vonnegut [source])
…and:
Eyes-Shut Facing Eyes-Rolling-Around
Pay close attention to your mean thoughts.
That sourness may be a blessing,
as an overcast day brings rain for the roses
and relief to dry soil.Don’t look so sourly on your sourness!
It may be it’s carrying what you most deeply need
and want. What seems to be keeping you from joy
may be what leads you to joy.Don’t call it a dead branch.
Call it the live, moist root.Don’t always be waiting to see
what’s behind it. That wait and see
poisons your Spirit.Reach for it.
Hold your meanness to your chest
as a healing root,
and be through with waiting.
(Jelaluddin Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks) [source])
…and:
Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn’t a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.
(Neil Gaiman [source])
