two for luck

Like a fool, she believed that her achievements might provide satisfaction commensurate to what it had taken to enact them.

Whatever I was now: certainly not a model of service to the Lord. No traditional values, or at least none that I wasn't actively working to undermine. I had never worried seriously about hell—actual hell, I mean—outside of looking at Renaissance paintings and marveling at their inventiveness in conjuring demons and punishments. But I had spent most of my life feeling guilty for nothing. Or, rather, guilty for things I'd done, some of which I was objectively correct to feel guilty about, others of which seemed wholly the product of a sin-centered upbringing. I'm not just talking about sex. But another thing about being raised Catholic is that one learns earlier than most that everything is, in fact, about sex.

A traveller! I love his title. A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from—toward—; it is the history of every one of us.

Promise me we'll always, always be best amigas! That is, until I realize you were merely the least lame option in a small student body, and I replace you with friends who reflect my actual preferences. XOXOXO —Lisa

I think now the worst affliction / is not to know who you are or have been / I have learned this in part / from writers

If you don't like someone's story, write your own.

Slept almost 7 hours. Woke. Made a fire. The beach is quiet. All alone. No children, who are all together on a special weekend away with one another. My husband has 2 shows today. No cats. No laundry. Momentarily at 6’s and 7’s. Found my reading material. Like ballast. I’ve heard about these types of days. I suppose I will remain in my nightgown.

Dear Adrienne: / I’m calling you up tonight / as I might call up a friend as I might call up a ghost / to ask what you intend to do / with the rest of your life.

Thus the publication of [May Sarton's] Journal of a Solitude in 1973 may be acknowledged as the watershed in women's autobiography. I call it watershed not because honest autobiographies had not been written before that day but because Sarton deliberately retold the record of her anger. And, above all other prohibitions, what has been forbidden to women is anger, together with the open admission of the desire for power and control over one's life.

I really do write for myself, I think, to be able to live. It’s an existential act. It’s been fundamental to who I am and how I am for as long as I can remember. Primarily, I write in a very selfish way for that most essential part of myself.

I think the best endings are really the ones that feel the writer leaves you off at that moment during the party where you’re having a really good time and you’ve eaten and you’ve talked to a lot of people and you’ve admired everything on the walls and whatever, but then they’re saying, “You know what? This isn’t your house. You have to go now.” That’s the kind of feeling I want when I leave a book. “Oh, that was so good, but I know I can’t be inside of this narrative reality for the rest of my life. It’s time to move on.”

There is something knotty here, something puzzling about the human condition in all of this. But maybe it's best to leave some things un-understood, mysterious. I'm all for the unclimbed mountain. The unconquered moon. I'm weary of endless theories and explanations. I think I have begun to prefer descriptions.

A healthy self has nothing to do with stardom. Psychological health comes from acceptance starting in early infancy of all that you are, good and bad, dirty and clean, naughty and nice, smart and stupid. In the adult, health is manifested by an accord between ideals and actions, by the ability to appreciate yourself for what you attempt to do as well as for what succeeds. It means recognizing that although you are not perfect, you are still worthy of love.

A scholar says that “The oceanic feeling,” The sense of infinitude Experienced in moments of Spiritual transcendence Closely resembles Our sensations in infancy. I think of Buck Mulligan describing the sea as “our great sweet mother.” He cries out “Thalatta! Thalatta!” Summoning the joy of the Myriads Finally coming upon the sea.

Well-meaning friends suggested she try writing short stories but she could not grasp the form or the point. She'd never studied creative writing, joined a group, or even taken a workshop. To her, writing was research. She had no writing practice. The only way she could do it was by default—the times when she was possessed by an idea too large and upsetting to formulate.