George Eliot

I just started reading George Eliot. God, she is good. Here's a quote, a shout out to those who have moved.

"Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible, nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas -- where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influnece of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories."

--first paragraph, Chapter 2 Silas Marner by George Eliot

A bit dramatic, laden with insight.

I have been drawn more and more to these pictures of Butoh.

A most embarrassing day. A strong desire not to exist. I sat in the back seat of my parents borrowed car and split open in a wet and torn way down the front from my hairy widow's peak to the sternum match point with the low notch of my pretend bra. Julia and Nick were sitting up front. They turned around and looked at me. "I don't think I should go."

We were on our way to Missouri. Nick's family was having a bond fire. I've been so full of anxiety and dread and worry over everything (not particularly bond fires) for quite a while. It's hard for me to even brush my teeth without feeling like something horrible is about to happen. I'm not sick in the way that I think I deserve bad things to continually happen to me, it is just that I think that is the way life is. .. or expect it to turn. The worst than the fear is the ashamed of the sadness. If I was sad and cynical and just loved it in the kind of Emily the Strange, Julianne Moore character in the Big Lebowski, or an Edward Gorian way it would be alright. It would be what people expect and I could feel comfortable being around them. But I'm not Emily the Strange. I'm bossy Sarah. Secretly weak, sad and not able to move more than a worm would fat in the ground.

The three of us bought windshield wipers and I cried for an hour. They just stared at me wondering what was going on. Then they left. I laid down on the couch and didn't turn the heat on. I wish there was something I could do, hold, rub or sit in that I liked.

I am sure there is, it just escapes me.