2
" During the crash and burn, I began to burn from cranial crown to flat sole, for meaning and understanding. Every concept, psychological perceptions with hardened pathways, everything that registered as inherited from the communal was starting to dissolve into meaninglessness. The foundational tenets, the pre-established belief systems, instilled sustenance systems tended by both family and extended communal began to dissolve, first as trivial, and then as untenable to my being without validation from me. If my life was worth anything, I choose to live the best life for me.
So I entered what I call The Blank State. "
― , Failure&solitude
4
" In a world where money, security, children, money, temptation, sex, money, passion and more money is all that women expect of men, that is what men begin to offer. Anyone who has anything different to offer is dismissed, if reluctantly. Men, in their eternal wooing dance, tend to cultivate those qualities which the desired sex expects. What's more, women who gave birth to them and later on rehearse them for their role MAKE them that way, with the help of sisters, mistresses or wives. Those who are too strong or too weak to be thus moulded are cast aside as rejects, socio-sexual-matrimonial drop-outs. The price is paid by humanity as a whole in terms of values. You cannot denigrate a part without diminishing the whole. Women, by relegating man to the status of a working slave, becomes a slave herself. Is diminished morally even if she does remain physically and intellectually superior. Granted that her responsibility for the propagation and survival of the species necessitates her adopting the master role -- she has to have safety, security and comfort, as much as humanly possible, to ensure the continuation of the human race -- it still remains a morally untenable stance. "
11
" Checking a box on a form for race—" Caucasian," " Hispanic," " African-American," " Native American," or " Asian-American" —is untenable and ridiculous. For one thing, " American" is not a race, so labels such as " Asian-American" and " African-American" are still exhibits of our confusion of culture and race. For another thing, how far back does one go in history? Native Americans are really Asians, if you go back more than twenty or thirty thousand years to before they crossed the Bering land bridge between Asia and America. And Asians, several hundred thousand years ago probably came out of Africa, so we should really replace " Native American" with " African-Asian-Native American." Finally, if the Out of Africa (single racial origin) theory holds true, then all modern humans are from Africa. (Cavalli-Sforza now thinks this may have been as recently as seventy thousand years ago.) Even if that theory gives way to the Candelabra (multiple racial origins) theory, ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to " African-American. "
14
" To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us. "
― Joan Didion