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" You did listen." He sat back, nodding his head. " Okay, then. Now tell me what you really thought." " I told you. It was interesting." " Interesting," he said, " is not a word." " Since when?" " It's a placeholder. Something you use when you don't want to say something else." He leaned a little closer to me. " Look, if you're worried about my feelings, don't be. You can say whatever you want. I won't be offended." " I did. I liked it." " Tell the truth. Say something. Anything. Just spit it out." " I—" I began, then stopped myself. Maybe it was the fact that he was so clearly on to me. Or my sudden awareness of how rarely I was honest. Either way, I broke. " I… I didn't like it," I said.He slapped his leg. " I knew it! You know, for someone who lies a lot, you're not very good at it." This was a good thing. Or not? I wasn't sure. " I'm not a liar," I said." Right. You're nice," he said." What's wrong with nice?" " Nothing. Except it usually involves not telling the truth," he replied. " Now. Tell me what you really thought. "
54
" Sitting on the porch alone, listening to them fixing supper, he felt again the indignation he had felt before, the sense of loss and the aloneness, the utter defenselessness that was each man's lot, sealed up in his bee cell from all the others in the world. But the smelling of boiling vegetables and pork reached him from the inside, the aloneness left him for a while. The warm moist smell promised other people lived and were preparing supper.
He listened to the pouring and the thunder rumblings that sounded hollow like they were in a rainbarrel, shared the excitement and the coziness of the buzzing insects that had sought refuge on the porch, and now and then he slapped detachedly at the mosquitoes, making a sharp crack in the pouring buzzing silence. The porch sheltered him from all but the splashes of the drops that hit the floor and their spray touched him with a pleasant chill. And he was secure, because someewhere out beyond the wall of water humanity still existed, and was preparing supper. "
― James Jones , From Here to Eternity
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" What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine.
When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her own. We move. She labors. Our body turns upside down in hers as we journey through the birth canal. She pushes in pain. We emerge, a head. She pushes one more time, and we slide out like a fish. Slapped on the back by the doctor, we breath. The umbilical cord is cut - not at our request. Separation is immediate. A mother reclaims her body, for her own life. Not ours. Minutes old, our first death is our own birth. "
― Terry Tempest Williams , Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place