The city knows you better than any living person because it has seen you when you are alone. It saw you steeling yourself for the job interview, slowly walking home after the late date, tripping over nonexistent impediments on the sidewalk. It saw you wince when the single frigid drop fell from the air conditioner twelve stories up and zapped you. It saw the bewilderment on your face as you stepped out of the stolen matinee, incredulous that there was still daylight after such a long movie. It saw you half-running up the street when you got the keys to your first apartment. The city saw all that. Remembers, too.
Consider what all your old apartments would say if they got together to swap stories. They could piece together the starts and finishes of your relationships, complain about your wardrobe and musical tastes, gossip about who you are after midnight. 7J says, So that’s what happened to Lucy— I knew it would never work out. You picked up yoga, you put down yoga, you tried various cures. You tried on selves and got rid of them, and this makes your old rooms wistful: why must things change? 3R goes, Saxophone, you say— I knew him when he played guitar. Cherish your old apartments and pause for a moment when you pass them. Pay tribute, for they are the caretakers of your reinvention.
—
Colson Whitehead, “City Limits” from The Colossus of New York
When he was in school, Werner never learned anything. He never read the books he was supposed to read, he never studied, he never knew what he was supposed to know, it seemed. But in reality, Werner always knew everything. His senses were remarkable. If he heard the slightest sound, ten years later he would remember it precisely, he would talk about it, and maybe use it some way. But he was absolutely unable to explain anything. He knows, he sees, he understands, but he cannot explain. That is not his nature. Everything goes into him. If it comes out, it comes out transformed.
—
-Werner Herzog’s mom (!), from Herzog on Herzog
I found this to be an incredibly profound description on the variety of how we apprehend the world individually, how we take in information, and what we do with it. As a teacher, I get sort of unnaturally obsessed with this notion: I am far more interested in how my students see literature and writing as connected to the way they see the world than in my telling them how to read something or what they should be taking away from it, or hell, what they should even do with all that information anyhow. I want to send more Werner Herzogs into the world, students who absorb a piece of literature and, I don’t know, turn it into a math equation or a video game or a piece of music. People who honor their internal compass. I am fortunate enough to teach at an “alternative” school that absorbs the kids that don’t quite “make it” in regular school. And you would be shocked (well, perhaps not) to know how many of these kids come in having no idea that they are “allowed” to make connections like this, that your future success in the world is not wholly dependent on whether or not you have mastered the five-paragraph essay. I think we have an enormous double-standard in the western world: follow the rules, unless you are very, very good a breaking the rules.
Everything of which I know but which I’m not at the moment thinking, Everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten. Everything perceived by my senses but not noted by my conscious mind. Everything which involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want and do. All future things that are taking shapes in me and will sometime come to consciousness. All this is the content of the unconscious.
Rupert Giles:
Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true; the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns and black hats; and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and we all live happily ever after.
The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation - a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
I can never say ‘why’ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‘how’ and ‘when’ and ‘what.’ But ‘why’ is impenetrable to me. Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.
When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.
the great loser friend who falls asleep before 9 at sleepovers
Red: Why don’t you follow his lead and just chill out, man? Dale: I’m chill. I’m chill as a cucumber, man. Red: You don’t seem chill. Dale: I’m more chill than you. Red: You’re more chill than me? Dale: Yeah. Red: Look what I’m wearing. Kimono, dog. What’re you wearing? Dale: A suit. Red: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know what’s up with you, but I don’t know if I like you. Dale: Well, I don’t know if I like you either, man. Red: Well, that’s your loss ‘cause I’m a great friend.
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