"I wished for nothing better than to be as one of them and to have no other life than theirs--that passionate, childish, gruesome, uncontrolled life that vacillates between happiness and fear." -- Plinio Designori
From The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
"And I, for my part, would always stand outside, alone and uncertain, full of intimations but without certainty."
"Distant as my childhood is, and incomprehensible and fabulous though it seems to me on the whole, I still sharply remember all the suffering and doubts I felt at the time, in the midst of happiness. All those feelings existed in the child's heart, where they have been ever since: doubt of my own worth, vacillation between self-esteem and discouragement, between idealistic contempt for the world and ordinary sensuality. And just as I did then, I later continued to regard these aspects of my nature sometimes as a miserable morbidity, sometimes as a distinction. At times I believed that God wished to lead me on this painful path to a special isolation and deepening of my nature, at other times I took it all as nothing but the signs of shabby weakness of character, of a neurosis such as thousands of people bear wearisomely through their lives."
From A Child's Heart
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Long Long Time
I tried and tried for a week to tune my voice to belt like Linda Ronstadt and all I did was hurt my larynx. Her recording of Long Long Time, written by Gary White, is actually my alarm on my phone now so I literally wake up every morning at 5:27 am to the words, "Love will abide, take things in stride, sounds like good advice, but there's no one at my side." And I look ruefully at the queen sized bed, empty mostly except for piles of Hermann Hesse memorabilia and the fleeing ghosts of my dreamtime fantasy lovers. The awful back spasms that greet my morning are doubled in terror by this beautiful song about facing the reality of fear and tears and loves that never were. I hit the snooze button and 5 minutes later the song starts again. This repeats 4 times until I get my boots on and prepare to meet a blazing sun that has roasted my flesh beyond recognition.
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