Wringed

Fame has a cost; paid in blood, time and  life.

~

I hoped you would come to my door, one day. I would be so lucky to get a visit from you, as your name was on the letters we received in the mail.  I was too young to order the magazines but I pestered my Mom, anyway.

I knew I would not be a star but  in my fantasy, I would have been  announced by you, as I got to sit in on that infamous sofa.

With your big, infectious joyful voice, I bet every kid that met you on the telethon felt  better, if only for a short time.

I hear you had a way of making people feel welcomed.

~~~

How could you be so lovely, causing kids in their teens and men from 20 to 80 to love you so? An Angel, grabbing the most eligible bachelors of the day.

Were you ever scared of your power over men, over people?

Did you see yourself as you were, in the hearts of those who adored you? Or did the false and merciless reflections in the mirrors held up to your face, dictate your eyes to what should be?

Those are questions that won’t be answered. But you never lost your true essence to my eyes.

~~~

What chance did you have, a tender babe of four that began doing work that adults had only begun.

Eleven years old when you fronted a band, the formal solidification of your  isolation.

What did you know of love, lust and desire when you covered this? A song of adult love, filtered through your young lips.

And you retreated into a world of make-believe. In that false world, you were not cared for, your illnesses not treated.

Did you wonder what it would like to go to the store alone?  To walk in a public park and not be mauled. To be normal.

Your talent still stuns me, as you did things others did not and you changed the entertainment game.

I will remember you like this, with your family, joy and happiness still on your face.

Quotes 4

Perhaps you did well to die before this revolution which claims you as its prophet, engulfing you sometimes in an ocean of saccharine compliments, and sometimes in the sea of blood spilled on the guillotines. I doubt my ability to give you an adequate representation of the cataclysms it has been our lot to endure… p.3

I am resolved to write the story of my life in plain terms and to describe my experiences as I lived them, without alteration or deletion. I know the terrible motto you chose for yourself, Jean-Jacques: vitam impendere vero, ” to sacrifice my life to the truth.” To that end, you lived in a  solitude I could never have endured. I loved too much the company of women, and the society of men: two worlds wherein one must lie to others if he does not wish to lie to himself. But I believe I have not been unworthy of you. I have sacrificed my life to the truth. p.4

The Only Son; Stéphane Audeguy,translated from the French by John Cullen

Quotes 3

Sometimes in summer, as the long day drew toward evening and we knew we should be starting home to the farm, we’d both lie facedown on the hillside and push our faces right into the harsh dry grass and hard clodded dirt, breathing in the infinitely complex smell, hay-sweet and soil-bitter, of the warm summer earth, our earth. Then we were both Saturn’s Children… pg. 16

Even in the true wild where there were no paths we were afraid of wolf and boar, not man. Because this order had held all my life as a girl, I thought it was the way the world had always been and would be. I had not learned how peace galls men, how they gather impatient rage against it as it continues, how even while they pray the powers for peace, they work against it and make certain it will be broken and give way to battle, slaughter, rape, and waste. Of all the greater powers the one I fear the most is the one I cannot worship, the one who walks the boundary, the one who sets the ram on the ewe, and the bull on the heifer, and the sword in the farmer’s hand: Mavors, Marmor, Mars.  p.30

Lavinia; by Ursula Le Guin

Quotes 2

‘Nobody should,’  said Joel. “That’s why in the Bible the priests drew lots to determine who would conduct the ritual slaughter, and they rotated the job every month. Slaughter is dehumanizing work if you have to do it every day.”

Temple Grandin, the animal-handling expert who’s helped design many slaughterhouses, has written that it is not uncommon for full-time slaughterhouse workers to become sadistic. “Processing but a few days a month means we can actually think about what we are doing”, Joel said, “and be as careful and humane as possible.”

-The Omnivore’s Dilemma, from Chapter 12, Slaughter In a Glass Abattoir, p. 235

Quote

“Curiosity. Its oldest roots in cura, meaning care.

Over time its meaning has undergone a succession of metamorphoses, from scrupulousness to ingenuity to attention unduly bestowed upon matters of inferior moment (curiosity about meats and drinks, for example) to the desire to learn or know about anything, trifles or matters that are none of one’s business, such as a curiosity to know the faults and imperfections in other men…

Also, it killed the cat.”  p.182

When Thomas thrust his hand into Jesus’ side, what he really wanted to feel was his own flesh and marrow. That’s curiosity: the wish to know exactly what we’re made of and to determine how fragile we are, or mortal or even — clinging to that most romantic version of hope that’s nothing more than wishful thinking — immortal. 183

God isn’t curious. Being everything, He has no need to be.

The day wore on. Seven days from the solstice, the sun appearing to stand still in the sky. If we lived in an infinite universe, the day’s light would eventually travel back to us, and with it an image of ourselves on that very same day.  184“