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convenience  QUOTES

2 " The emotion of love is an affective emotion, directly reacting to goodness, rather than an aggressive one, reacting to challenge. Not only our so-called natural ability to grow and propagate exemplify natural love, but every faculty has a built-in affinity for what accords with its nature. By passion we mean some result of being acted on: either a form induced by the agent (like weight) or a movement consequent on the form (like falling to the ground). Whatever we desire acts on us in this way, first arousing an emotional attachment to itself and making itself agreeable, and then drawing us to seek it. The first change the object produces in our appetite is a feeling of its agreeableness: we call this love (weight can be thought of as a sort of natural love); then desire moves us to seek the object and pleasure comes to rest in it. Clearly then, as a change induced in us by an agent, love is a passion: the affective emotion strictly so, the will to love by stretching of the term. Love unites by making what is loved as agreeable to the lover as if it were himself or a part of himself. Though love is not itself a movement of the appetite towards an object, it is a change the appetite undergoes rendering an object agreeable. Favour is a freely chosen and willing love, open only to reasoning creatures; and charity―literally, holding dear―is a perfect form of love in which what is loved is highly prized. To love, as Aristotle says, is to want someone’s good; so its object is twofold: the good we want, loved with a love of desire, and the someone we want it for (ourselves or someone else), loved with a love of friendship. And just as what exist in the primary sense are subjects of existence, and properties exist only in a secondary sense, as modes in which subjects exist; so too what we love in the primary sense is the someone whose good we will, and only in a secondary sense do we love the good so willed. Friendship based on convenience or pleasure is friendship inasmuch as we want our friend’s good; but because this is subordinated to our own profit or pleasure such friendship is subordinated to love of desire and falls short of true friendship. "

Thomas Aquinas , Summa Theologica

3 " A man walks into a bar and says:
Take my wife–please.
So you do.
You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her
and she leaves you and you’re desolate.
You’re on your back in your undershirt, a broken man
on an ugly bedspread, staring at the water stains
on the ceiling.
And you can hear the man in the apartment above you
taking off his shoes.
You hear the first boot hit the floor and you’re looking up,
you’re waiting
because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be
some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together
but here we are in the weeds again,
here we are
in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn’t make sense.
And then the second boot falls.
And then a third, a fourth, a fifth.

A man walks into a bar and says:
Take my wife–please.
But you take him instead.
You take him home, and you make him a cheese sandwich,
and you try to get his shoes off, but he kicks you
and he keeps kicking you.
You swallow a bottle of sleeping pills but they don’t work.
Boots continue to fall to the floor
in the apartment above you.
You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything’s okay and you tell them
you’re just tired.
And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.

A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
Make it a double.
A man walks into a bar, you this time, and says:
Walk a mile in my shoes.
A man walks into a convenience store, still you, saying:
I only wanted something simple, something generic…
But the clerk tells you to buy something or get out.
A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
but then he’s still left with his hands. "

Richard Siken

9 " Simon whispered to me, “But is everything okay?”
“No,” Tori said. “I kidnapped her and forced her to escape with me. I’ve been using her as a human shield against those guys with guns, and I was just about to strangle her and leave her body here to throw them off my trail. But then you showed up and foiled my evil plans. Lucky for you, though. You get to rescue poor little Chloe again and win her undying gratitude.”
“Undying gratitude?” Simon looked at me. “Cool. Does that come with eternal servitude? If so, I like my eggs sunnyside up.”
I smiled. “I’ll remember that.”

***

“Oh, right. You must be starving.” Simon reached into his pockets. “I can offer one bruised apple and one brown banana. Convenience stores aren’t the place to buy fruit, as I keep telling someone.”
“Better than these. For you, anyway, Simon.” Derek passed a bar to Tori.
“Because you aren’t supposed to have those, are you?” I said. “Which reminds me…” I took out the insulin. “Derek said it’s your backup.”
“So my dark secret is out.”
“I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“Not really. Just not something I advertise.”
...
“Backup?” Tori said. “You mean he didn’t need that?”
“Apparently not,” I murmured.
Simon looked from her to me, confused, then understanding. “You guys thought…”
“That if you didn’t get your medicine in the next twenty-four hours, you’d be dead?” I said. “Not exactly, but close. You know, the old ‘upping the ante with a fatal disease that needs medication’ twist. Apparently, it still works.”
“Kind of a letdown, then, huh?”
“No kidding. Here we were, expecting to find you minutes from death. Look at you, not even gasping.”
“All right, then. Emergency medical situation, take two.”
He leaped to his feet, staggered, keeled over, then lifted his head weakly.
“Chloe? Is that you?” He coughed. “Do you have my insulin?”
I placed it in his outstretched hand.
“You saved my life,” he said. “How can I ever repay you?”
“Undying servitude sounds good. I like my eggs scrambled.”
He held up a piece of fruit. “Would you settle for a bruised apple?”
I laughed. "

Kelley Armstrong , The Awakening (Darkest Powers, #2)

19 " we are born into this world on the tailcoats of a scream. born into gritted teeth and a shock of red across the pristine. born into a solemn hush. are you evil? you, who tore into this world on a steed of crimson… are you a monster? we are born as angels, toothless, a mouth a gurgling brook. and as we grow, so do our wings, until we are high enough to see that our church is no more than a small forest and the altar a tree. are you a monster, angel with fangs? all teeth, thick with teeth, you can’t even close your mouth anymore. it rains and it’s like drowning.

corn husk skin and we’re born again. into a time of being tied down, to a person, to a bed. a time of clipped wings. of holy cries out to a void. your wildness a convenience store in the desert, pale pink, dusty, arid. your wildness staring longingly at the screaming horizon and flicking another cigarette butt into the dirt, a lone oscillating fan its only company. we’re born into this concrete world, where sanctuary is to be alone or to pretend to like it. this world of broken bottles instead of leaf crunch. roadside motels proclaiming vacancies. inside and out. that pluck your heartstrings. a new church, a fresh sin. the altar now a white railing against a muted matte pink wall. you lean against it, hips jutted to the side. some of the eighties still lingers. you see a man in a leather jacket kissing a girl’s neck purple. he looks up. teeth are everywhere. hundreds of glistening teeth. you turn away. your wings shush against an old telephone booth, door forced closed. you’re calling your mother to say you’re sorry for hurting her, but when she answers you hang up. "

Taylor Rhodes , calloused: a field journal