Saturday, December 19, 2009

Scott Dunlop

"So I feel a bit bi-polar- so fucking what? Everybody has poles, they just aren’t always exaggerated to the point of seeming all-encompassing. The wretched gaiety, the bruised joys of interaction and intervention can flail you and leave you naked, your arteries, veins and nerve-endings exposed to the relentless elements. Imagine a sterile homogeneous world where everything is not just vanilla, it is sugar-flavour-excitement-free, totally devoid of the sinister and blissful vagaries that season the dish. It is fucking hard to deal with raw emotions: Picture the slaughter, the cleaning of the beast, the preparation of the cuts of meat- that’s raw emotion. Nothing like the golden fucking ratio of a medallion fillet served as haute cuisine. So emotions tend to leak and spill, and shriek and cower, and resist taming at all costs. They spew into corners and coat the freshly laundered linen hanging on the washing line with grime and industrial fallout. They come with their corers, gouging and splitting the flesh, dividing the heart from the marrow. Yeah, we reel into the pathways of oncoming trucks knowing that the coup de grace is imminent, yet powerless to resist ..."

Scott Dunlop

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Siddhārtha Gautama

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."

Siddhārtha Gautama

Robert Fulghum

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."

Robert Fulghum

Elie Wiesel

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."

Elie Wiesel

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Stephen King

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."

Stephen King

Stephen King

"Your hair is winter fire
January embers
My heart burns there, too."

Stephen King

Stephen King

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."

Stephen King

Stephen King

"I have the heart of a small boy...and I keep it in a jar on my desk."

Stephen King

Carl Gustav Jung

"What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved -- what then?"

Carl Gustav Jung

P.C. Cast

"I seek strength, not to be greater than other, but to fight my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself"

P.C. Cast

Stephen King

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear."

Stephen King

Scott Dunlop

Its standard police procedure (I’m assuming it is- I’m an expert on it having watched police programs from Kojak to Dexter), to ask the surviving relatives if the stiff, or the vic, had any enemies, so that they can ID the perp.

This is a useful debriefing procedure when you are interrogating yourself in the wee hours. One of you sits hunched in a chair, hollow-eyed and jonesin’ for a coffee or a smoke, while the other circles you. No good cop, bad cop, but rather just a mean lying rat-assed bastard of an inquisitor, second guessing everything you thought was true, but now have lost your bearings with. The lack of sleep and the constant revisiting of scenes of crimes, real and imagined warp the timelines and coordinates of reality. Soon you are adding to your mild wrongdoings a list of heinous activities that is almost genocidal in its documented form. The endless questioning has you longing for the stark comfort of your cell, where the fears and memories are contained and almost disarmed.

So what you need to do is ask what or who your enemies are. For some it maybe the guy at work who shamelessly takes credit for your labours but belittles you in meetings. It could be a family member with whom you refuse to share space at family events. Could be an actual enemy, who has genuinely threatened you. But don’t forget to add yourself to the list of suspects. Yup. Who knows better about how to mess with your head than you? Who can flick your buttons and twist your screws? Who knows that the worst kind of enemy is one from whom you cannot hide?

It’s not a death sentence. You can separate the fictions from the realities, and parse the evil from the good. The best defense against an inner enemy is an inner ally. It helps to surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth, and provide reinforcements of encouragement and love. Thank you for doing that.

Scott Dunlop