Odds and ends, again...

I saw the above picture on Pinterest last night and immediately felt its truth...because what you know and what you feel are often two vastly different things and can cause lots of inner turmoil.

You might know very well, for example, that someone in your life doesn't like you, yet you still have feelings for them anyway, feelings that you can't seem to get past. You want to make peace with this person and if that doesn't work, conquer your own emotions, the things that are making this your problem and no one else's.

Is it even possible to change how someone sees you? Sometimes, I think the more you want someone to like you, the more you try...the worse it gets. I also think if someone has made up their mind not to like, there's no changing the situation. But I don't see any harm in trying, as long any attempts made are with reason and restraint...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2012/09/16/how-to-win-over-someone-who-doesnt-like-you/

 "I mean, don't you ever get sick of yourself?" he asked Claire. "Doesn't it sometimes seem ridiculous that we have to live our entire lives in one consciousness, and there's no escape? Even when we dream, we dream about ourselves. Doesn't that just seem outrageous?"

I think of this quote, which perhaps because of its stark honesty has always stayed in my mind, whenever I want to escape from my own thinking.

That's why books and music and people are so important in this world. Even though reading or listening to music can be solitary activities, they still can get you to leave your own mind and venture out into a much less scary world than what's in your head.

As Joseph Conrad once wrote in an essay about Henry James:

...the demand of the individual to the artist is, in effect, the cry, "Take me out of myself!"

I couldn't agree more!

I can't share this with the person I wish I could, so I'll share it here...it is such a lovely poem, one I know well by now, but only first discovered when I heard it read by Ron Perlman years ago on the Beauty and the Beast (tv show, CBS, 1989):

E. E. Cummings

(1894 - 1962)
American

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
 

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

The soundtrack to this wonderful tv show has long been out of print, but if you can manage to track down a seller, you should get a copy...it mixes poetry readings with beautiful songs and is the best Christmas present my sister ever gave me, way back in the 80s! :)

Here is a link: http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Beast-Of-Love-Hope/dp/B000BLI3BG

And you can hear the song "The First Time I Loved Forever," mixed with e.e. Cummings...it's absolutely stunning, but not at all safe to listen to if you're in an emotionally vulnerable state right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI4UBk0ICGc

There's a new biography on author Rebecca West that a review in the Washington Post has inspired me to read. It mentions how good she was at keeping a mask on even as she worried terribly and had deep insecurities as her “worth as a sexual being.” I completely forgot I own two unread books by her, which I dug out out recently and gobbled up quickly.

Lorna Gibb tells us, in this sensible and readable biography of the great Rebecca West, that once at lunch with various luminaries including the Aga Khan, Odette Keun, H.G. Wells’s mistress of the moment, “turned to the Aga Khan, asking him to back up her opinion that the English were prudish in public but ‘lubricious in private.’ ” The remark seems to have embarrassed most (if not all) at the table, but surely truer words have rarely been spoken. If friendships and rivalries are dominant themes of British literary life, sex in all its various manifestations runs them a close second, and rarely more so than in the life of Cicely Isabel Fairfield, born in 1892, who changed her name to Rebecca West in 1911 and proceeded to cut an exceedingly strange swath through the bedrooms of the literati.

For me of this review read here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-extraordinary-life-of-rebecca-west-b-y-lorna-gibb/2014/05/28/5f6c7c3c-df52-11e3-9743-bb9b59cde7b9_story.html

 

Even though I'd like to think I'm mostly a happy person, or at least more happy than sad, I've always been drawn to sad music more than upbeat. This old article from the New York Times is rather interesting:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/why-we-like-sad-music.html?_r=0

 

 

And if you love vinyl, you'll probably love this article from Slate: 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/06/18/eilon_paz_photographs_record_collectors_in_his_book_dust_grooves_adventures.html

This is for all the lonely people...

I've been listening to lots of music and most of it has been great for elevating my mood, but then my iTunes shuffle hit "Lonely People" by America, which is actually supposed to be uplifting, but sounds so damn sad you can fall into a funk if you're not careful.

"Lonely People"

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky

This is for all the single people
Thinking that love has left them dry
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
You never know until you try

Well, I'm on my way
Yes, I'm back to stay
Well, I'm on my way back home (Hit it)

This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by
Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup
And never take you down or never give you up
You never know until you try

My antidote for the bluesy blahs this inspired is to put on "A Horse With No Name;" it's so deceptively vague and lazy in description ("there were plants and birds and rocks and things," "the heat was hot" and "the ground was dry") it's almost funny, plus I just like the song a lot so I'm already feeling better with all those "la la la la la"s and "don't harsh my mellow" vibes.

I love to see people try and figure out what it's about:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1310

And, of course, "Sister Golden Hair" is so pretty and nice to sing along to, that's another non-bummer.

Meanwhile, I'm still reading Married Love by Dr. Marie Stopes and her theory on how two people come together goes something like this:

To use a homely simile – one might compare two human beings to two wires through which pass electric currents. Isolated from each other the electric forces within them pass uninterrupted along their length, but if these wires come into the right juxtaposition, the force is transmuted, and a spark, a glow of burning light arises between them. Such is love.

I don't know that I necessarily believe it's true, but it kind of sounds scientifically romantic.