nicoleslaw

It seems to me that either we believe that all human experience is valuable, that any life has the potential to reveal something true for every life—a universality achieved not through the effacement of difference but through devotion to it—or we don’t.

If you’re working alone, read your pieces aloud; perform them with vigor. Doing so will almost certainly lead you to improve the text here and there, to play some more with it, to make the sound of it still stronger and livelier.

There’s a lot of pressure in the industry right now, especially for marginalized writers, to reproduce and offer portraits of trauma for their shock value and difference or to make you more sympathetic. But what does it really mean when your audience needs you to eviscerate yourself in order to prove you’re human?

twinkle

I realized that the part I had to get right really wasn’t about anyone else; it was really about me. I would never really know what my mother’s story was, or my relatives’ reaction to it, or my father’s even. The thing I had to get right was me trying to figure that all out. Once I realized that, then really what mattered was that I do my best.

There isn’t really any solution to self-doubt. In the end, you just have to write and doubt simultaneously.

You’re telling yourself one of the oldest bad stories in the book: I must be great to be worthy of love. That’s the voice of a kid who wasn’t loved simply for being herself. The rotten luck here is that the people in your past couldn’t supply you that love. So that now falls to you.

We need to communicate with people through technology the same way that we would in person: with dignity and respect.

We’re all very familiar with the experience of fear escalating, or the experience of running away from fear. But have we ever taken the time to truly touch our fear, to be present with it and experience it fully? Do we know what it might mean to smile at fear?

Many of us prefer practices that will not cause discomfort, and at the same time we want to be healed. But bodhichitta training doesn’t work that way. A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, and it’s also what makes us afraid.

O yes! Binaries are riveting, and they are everywhere. In and of themselves, they aren’t the enemy; it’s more that they break down under scrutiny, so you’ve got to take that time. And sometimes the way to destabilize one is to pay attention to the intensity of its lock on you.

I just to want to express some small part of who I am in the world, to love people well, to spend time with those who don’t have time for any other bullshit.

Some of my mentors, artistic or not, were and are childless and the happiest, most fulfilled and enlightened people I know. I’ve learned from them that children do not innately make you happy and fulfilled: only you can do that, and to shuffle the responsibility onto a kid is actually a pretty cruel thing to do.