The person who has a sense of humor is not just more relaxed in the face of a potentially stressful situation, but is more flexible in his approach.
Life is too short for a half-rack.
Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that's what you're left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich.
We never did things as we were supposed to do. That was part of our ethic. We did what felt right to us, not what someone told us we should do.
I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.
My dad's gay experiences really had a very positive influence on me and my straight relationships - how to better accept all the weirdness and ambiguity and ups and downs and paradoxes. I knew from the beginning I was writing about love.
The littlest thing can have the strongest connection when you're grieving. Your Proustian, poetic nerve is turned up to ten.
An old medical friend gave me some excellent practical advice. He said: "You will have for some time to go much oftener down steps than up steps. Never mind! win the good opinions of washerwomen and such like, and in time you will hear of their recommendations of you to the wealthier families by whom they are employed. " I did so, and found it succeed as predicted.
Most people who've never experienced non-ordinary states of consciousness and only hear them described tend to try to describe them in terms of the logical, rational way of looking at things, the so-called scientific explanation, which often leaves a lot lacking and doesn't really fulfill understanding the experience at all.
No one is demonizing or even saying anything as intemperate as Donald Trump has said about blacks living in squalor conditions.
I don't ever want to be caught up in a system of thinking I can do one thing 'cos that's just. . . that's just telling yourself a lie.