Tag: Hope

…because you make me dream…

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Into the car with the passionate taxi driver. “You stay young forever,” the man told me, whipping around moodily, “because you look good.” And drew a meditative face with his hand over his face… “Kind,” he said to himself, “you seem kind. I speak English to you,” he said, “because you make me dream.”

— Patricia Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You: A Novel (Riverhead Books, September 23, 2025)

Notes:

  • Some real nuggets in this book but regrettably cannot (NOT, absolutely NOT, unless you are a masochist) recommend this book.
  • NY Times Book Review by Dwight Garner: “A Novel That Captures the Agony and Absurdity of Covid Brain Fog. In “Will There Ever Be Another You,” Patricia Lockwood recounts the pandemic’s devastating effects on her life.”
  • Image: Boston Globe by Greg Hoax

In those moments, you know in your heart what it is you have to do

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This is what happens. You’re cast out into the world and spend your life instinctively gathering. Love, sex, family, friends, houses, cars, experiences. You never stop gathering. And it’s only as you get older that you start to notice the things you’re losing along the way. And that’s when regret starts to grow like a tumor in your belly. But there are rare moments of clarity when you can see your life laid out in front of you. All the cogs and the wheels. The right and wrong turns. The triumphs and heartaches. And in those moments, you can actually catch sight of the things that really matter. The things that make you whole. The things without which you’re heaven instantly becomes the hell of your own making. In those moments, you know in your heart what it is you have to do, what it is you have to save… at any cost.

— Coop (Jon Hamm), Your Friends & Neighbors (S1: E6, “The Things You Lost Along the Way”)

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Are we facing toward the light? How about now?

— Alexandra Fuller, Fi: A Memoir of My Son (Grove Press, April 9, 2024)
 

Notes:

Walking. With a very little blow.

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1,488 consecutive (almost) days that I’ve been on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. 12 days from 1,500 — more than four years of this Thing.

“And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.” – Ezra Pound

But before I leave the house, I flip through the morning papers. I know better, I do. But can’t seem to resist the rubbernecking. Ukraine. Israel. Gaza. Washington cesspool. China. Russia. North Korea. All feels dark and getting darker – the world’s shadows deepen.

“I could feel hope traveling backward to find us,
to whisper into our chests,
There will be music for you one day.” — Andrea Gibson

Weather app reads 59° F (?), but there’s a brisk wind from the North. Am I in Greenland? Glad I wore a jacket, I zip up.

I walk.

4:30 am. Wildlife is up. Smallest birds with the loudest voices break the silence of early morning. 4 other insomniacs are out sharing this twilight hour, each lost in their own quiet rhythm.

“Birdsong, wind, and waves. 
It requires nothing more than to meet noise with stillness 
and not commentary.” – Martin Laird

I walk.

Continue reading “Walking. With a very little blow.” →

Lightly Child. Lightly.

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Hope, neuroscientists say, resides in the orbitofrontal cortex, one of the most confounding parts of the human brain, which somehow directs our decision-making and expectation and memory and emotional behaviors and our hedonic experiences — which is to say, what devastates us and what makes our life worth living. It is located just above our eyes: it dictates how we see the world. I wonder if this is why, to envision a hoped — for beyond or to focus better on a hopeful wish or a prayer, we close our eyes, or look up.

— Anna Badkhen, from “To See Beyond: A Hoping in Three Pictures” in “Bright Unbearable Reality: Essays” (New York Review Books, October 18, 2022)

Notes: Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. Quote Source: Thank you Beth @ via Alive on All Channels.