in waves

A Pang is more conspicuous in Spring

Mark Rothko, Personage 2, 1946, Oil on canvas 142 x 82 cm

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question.

i'm listening to gathering moss, by robin wall kimmerer, and she is talking about a very odd job she was consigned to do, where an eccentric millionaire recuited her to consult on a "habitat restoration". when she arrives, the job they actually want her to do is to tell them how to plant mosses on the rocks in his garden. he wants it to look like a specific, beautiful wild cliff in the woods nearby, with centuries-old beds of moss growing thick and strong. she tells him it is impossible. such a thing would take decades to accomplish.

This quote really got me: "The owner is a man who loves mosses, and the exercise of power. I have no doubts of his sincerity in wishing to protect them from harm, once they conformed to his landscape design.  But I think you cannot own a thing and love it at the same time. Owning diminishes the sovreignty of a thing, enriching the possessor and diminishing the possessed. If he truly loved mosses more than control, he would have left them alone, and walked each day to see them."