Tag: fear

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment millions of human beings are standing at crossroads and intersections, in jungles and deserts, showing each other where to turn, what the right way is, which direction. They explain exactly where to go, what is the quickest way to get there, when to stop and ask again. There, over there. The second turnoff, not the first, and from there left or right, near the white house, by the oak tree.  They explain with excited voices, with a wave of the hand and a nod of the head: There, over there, not that there, the other there, as in some ancient rite. This too is a new religion.  I believe with perfect faith, that at this very moment.

— Yehuda Amichai, from “I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What Is My Life Span? Open Closed Open” in “Open Closed Open: Poems.” Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld. (Harcourt, 2000)

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Q: What part (of his legendary career) was hardest for you?

Neil Diamond: It was always pretty hard. I was a little embarrassed. I was flattered and I was scared.

Q: What were you scared of?

ND: Being found out is the scariest thing. You can hope, because we all have a facade and the truth be known to all of them, I’m not some big star. I’m I’m just me.

—  Neil Diamond. Excerpt from an interview with Anthony Mason about the Broadway production of “A Beautiful Noise,” a musical based on his life.

Watch the full interview on CBS Sunday Morning on April 2, 2022 here: Neil Diamond on Parkinson’s and “A Beautiful Noise”. The life of singer-songwriter Neil Diamond has been dramatized, “warts and all,” in the Broadway musical “A Beautiful Noise.” Diamond, now 82, talks with correspondent Anthony Mason about continuing to sing; his diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (a condition for which he was, he says, long in denial); and about the calm that has – finally – moved into “the hurricane of my life.”

If the video links above don’t work, try this one: CBS Sunday Morning – Neil Diamond Interview

Sleep, Harris. Rest from Yourself.

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Rest…

leave behind fear, hope, anger, spilled milk.

Take silence only.

Sky, wind. Sunrise after the rain.

Forget the rest.

Sleep, Harris.

Rest from yourself.

— Reverend West (Vondie Curtis-Hall), Raymond & Ray (Apple TV+, 2022)

 

 

And then, there’s the Tuesday Morning Wake-Up Call

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We compartmentalized the stress and ongoing trauma, flattening it into something survivable, but we nonetheless ate it for breakfast, and lunch, and dinner. We swam in that stress. We slept in it. We swallowed it in gulps. We lived through it, and we told ourselves stories of resilience, because what other choice did we have.

But the body is bad at pretending. It keeps the damn score.

— Anne Helen Petersen, from “That’s a Stress Response. All the ways your body is (still) reactions to the pandemic.” (Culture Study, June 1, 2022)

Tuesday Morning Wake-Up Call

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It was always here, like a secret door you’ve been trying to kick in for years.

And then, in the midst of this trial, as you hang your head in defeat, you notice that around your neck you are wearing a key.

— Jillian Horton, We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing (HarperCollins Publishers, February 23, 2021)

Notes: Image: Daryn Stumbaugh via Unsplash