1
" It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it's easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it's in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one's dreams would have no meaning. "
― Paulo Coelho , The Alchemist
5
" The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called " doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call " dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . . "
12
" Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun. "
― John Donne
13
" the phantom of the man-who-would-understand,
the lost brother, the twin ---
for him did we leave our mothers,
deny our sisters, over and over?
did we invent him, conjure him
over the charring log,
nights, late, in the snowbound cabin
did we dream or scry his face
in the liquid embers,
the man-who-would-dare-to-know-us?
It was never the rapist:
it was the brother, lost,
the comrade/twin whose palm
would bear a lifeline like our own:
decisive, arrowy,
forked-lightning of insatiate desire
It was never the crude pestle, the blind
ramrod we were after:
merely a fellow-creature
with natural resources equal to our own. "
― Adrienne Rich , The Dream of a Common Language
15
" The morning after the 9/11 attacks...we began talking about the Twin Towers attack. Ruud shook his head sadly about it all. He said, " It's so weird, isn't it, all these people saying this has to do with Islam?" I couldn't help myself...I blurted out, " But it *is* about Islam. This is based in belief. This is Islam." Ruud said, " Ayaan, of course these people may have been Muslims, but they are a lunatic fringe. We have extremist Christians, too, who interpret the bible literally. Most Muslims do not believe these things. To say so is to disparage a faith which is the second largest religion in the world, and which is civilized, and peaceful." I walked into the office thinking, " I have to wake these people up." ...The Dutch had forgotten that it was possible for people to stand up and wage war, destroy property, imprison, kill, impose laws of virtue because of the call of God. That kind of religion hadn't been present in Holland for centuries. It was not a lunatic fringe who felt this way about America and the West. I knew that a vast mass of Muslims would see the attacks as justified retaliation against the infidel enemies of Islam. "
17
" Pre-modern forms of authority , based predominantly upon value-rationality and natural law, are here succeeded by legal-rational forms of domination and by the rule of instrumental reason. With this, religious beliefs and ultimate ideals gradually recede from (public) life as they are disenchanted by the claims of 'rational' science and are replaced increasingly by the idealized pursuit of secular, material ends. This leads to a world in which questions of meaning and value disappear from the public arena, and in which the scope for creative action and for the pursuit of ultimate values becomes increasingly restricted. And in this regard, the twin processes of cultural and social rationalization lead to the same end: to a condition of nihilism in which the highest 'ultimate' values are devalued, or devalue themselves, and hence, for the most part, are no longer able to guide social action, which itself becomes, in turn, increasingly routinized and mundane. "
18
" Glossa
Time goes by, time comes along,
All is old and all is new;
What is right and what is wrong,
You must think and ask of you;
Have no hope and have no fear,
Waves that rise can never hold;
If they urge or if they cheer,
You remain aloof and cold.
To our sight a lot will glisten,
Many sounds will reach our ear;
Who could take the time to listen
And remember all we hear?
Keep aside from all that patter,
Seek yourself, far from the throng
When with loud and idle clatter
Time goes by, time comes along.
Nor forget the tongue of reason
Or its even scales depress
When the moment, changing season,
Wears the mask of happiness -
It is born of reason's slumber
And may last a wink as true:
For the one who knows its number
All is old and all is new.
Be as to a play, spectator,
As the world unfolds before:
You will know the heart of matter
Should they act two parts or four;
When they cry or tear asunder
From your seat enjoy along
And you'll learn from art to wonder
What is right and what is wrong.
Past and future, ever blending,
Are the twin sides of same page:
New start will begin with ending
When you know to learn from age;
All that was or be tomorrow
We have in the present, too;
But what's vain and futile sorrow
You must think and ask of you;
For the living cannot sever
From the means we've always had:
Now, as years ago, and ever,
Men are happy or are sad:
Other masks, same play repeated;
Diff'rent tongues, same words to hear;
Of your dreams so often cheated,
Have no hope and have no fear.
Hope not when the villains cluster
By success and glory drawn:
Fools with perfect lack of luster
Will outshine Hyperion!
Fear it not, they'll push each other
To reach higher in the fold,
Do not side with them as brother,
Waves that rise can never hold.
Sounds of siren songs call steady
Toward golden nets, astray;
Life attracts you into eddies
To change actors in the play;
Steal aside from crowd and bustle,
Do not look, seem not to hear
From your path, away from hustle,
If they urge or if they cheer;
If they reach for you, go faster,
Hold your tongue when slanders yell;
Your advice they cannot master,
Don't you know their measure well?
Let them talk and let them chatter,
Let all go past, young and old;
Unattached to man or matter,
You remain aloof and cold.
You remain aloof and cold
If they urge or if they cheer;
Waves that rise can never hold,
Have no hope and have no fear;
You must think and ask of you
What is right and what is wrong;
All is old and all is new,
Time goes by, time comes along. "
― Mihai Eminescu , Poems
