Buona notte, caro mio I am... «Eat, Pray, Love»
vladt__19 марта 2022Buona notte, caro mio
I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.
"Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."
There was once a cartoon in The New Yorker magazine. Two women talking, one saying to the other: "If you really want to get to know someone, you have to divorce him." Of course, my experience was the opposite. I would say that if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce him. Or her.
"Oh my God, baby, you are in so much trouble.”
In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.
Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted-an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore-despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.
I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.
"You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like… miniature golf face.”
Experience teaches us that the world is no nursery.
"I DO NOT FUCKING BELIEVE IN YOU!!!!!!!!
You are, after all, what you think.
You should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead.
And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.
"If you want to look for another partner in your life, of course you have nothing but my blessings.”
I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am.
Everything sad leaked through me and left damp traces behind.
"No town can live peacefully, whatever its laws," Plato wrote, "when its citizens… do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love.”
The other problem with all this swinging through the vines of thought is that you are never where you are. You are always digging in the past or poking at the future, but rarely do you rest in this moment.
The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.”
Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.
I should say here that I'm aware not everyone goes through this kind of metaphysical crisis. Some of us are hardwired for anxiety about mortality, while some of us just seem more comfortable with the whole deal.
The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not run red with blood. Life continues to go on. Even the Italian post office will keep limping along, doing its own thing without you-why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential? Why don't you let it be?
This stuff can be painful, but it's awfully beneficial.
"How do you keep the motivation to stay with it?" "What's the alternative? To quit whenever something gets challenging? To futz around your whole life, miserable and incomplete?”
What worked yesterday doesn't always work today.
"Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.”
You are born with nothing-no watch, no T-shirt. You work hard, then you die with nothing-no watch, no T-shirt. You are young, then you are old. No matter how hard you work, you cannot stop getting old.”
You were young and stupid then. Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance.
Well. A word about masturbation, if I may. Sometimes it can be a handy (forgive me) tool, but other times it can be so acutely unsatisfying that it only makes you feel worse in the end. After a year and half of celibacy, after a year and a half of calling my own name in my bed-built-for-one, I was getting a little sick of the sport. Still, tonight, in my restless state-what else could I do? The potatoes hadn't worked. So I had my way with myself yet again. As usual, my mind paged through its backlog of erotic files, looking for the right fantasy or memory that would help get the job done fastest.
To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever-or not?”
Why did life ever seem difficult?
"Make people do funny things. Everyone gets like this, at the beginning of love. Wanting too much happiness, too much pleasure, until you make yourself sick. Even to Wayan this happens at beginning of love story. Lose balance.”
"To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.”
"Liz-I'm healer. I fix all problems, with women's vaginas, with men's bananas. Sometimes for women, I even make fake penises. For making sex alone.""Dildos?" I asked, shocked."Not everyone has Brazilian boyfriend, Liz," she admonished. Then she looked at Felipe and said brightly, "If you ever need help making stiff your banana, I can give you medicine.”
"If you tell me slowly, I can understand quickly.”
I happen to be falling in love, and that always makes the world seem delightful, no matter how insane your reality.
always wanted to hear a man say, "Let me take care of you forever," and I have never heard it spoken before. Over the last few years, I'd given up looking for that person, learned how to say this heartening sentence to myself, especially in times of fear. But to hear it from someone else now, from someone who is speaking sincerely…
"Fear-who cares?”
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