Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don’t know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of
The inexplicable loneliness we sometimes feel might be due to the fact that self-expression fails to capture the complexity of our actual neurological states. Paul Churchland, for example, suggests that the two hemispheres of our brains communicate with a much more intricate and intimate “language” than we do with each other. On the other hand, some philosophers claim that language doesn’t gain its meaning from our internal experience at all,
The further I got into life, the worse my life became and the more I needed to write about it. The more I expressed my feelings through written words, the less I wanted to give into urges of self-pity. Writing didn’t destroy all the bad thoughts that tormented me, but it allowed me to think past them. The process became a sanctuary no one could touch or take away, and
But if one sat down among the rushes and watched the pool—pools have some curious fascination, one knows not what—the red and black letters and the white paper seemed to lie very thinly on the surface, while beneath went on some profound under-water life like the brooding, the ruminating of a mind. Many, many people must have come there alone, from time to time, from age to age, dropping their
One thing all the founding fathers have in common is that they are dead. We are the ones who are alive, we are the ones who must make the laws and constitution work, juggling many variables the founders could never have foreseen. They created an America in which black people were deemed to be property and women did not have the right to vote, much less run for office. The
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies –
