“It’s…natural that unexpected conflicts should arise, and it’s natural that wounds may be inflicted during those conflicts. The wounds pass, and only the scars remain.- Paulo Coehlo, ‘The Art of Trying’ in Like the Flowing River, Trans. Margaret Jull. Thomson Press: India, 2000.
This is a blessing. These scars stay wit us throughout our life and are very helpful. If…the desire to return to the past becomes very great, we need only look at those scars. They are the marks left by the handcuffs, and will reminds us of the horrors of prison, and we will keep walking straight ahead.”
Monday, June 23, 2008
Coelho: The Art of Trying
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Mary Gaitskill: Secretary
"Each cut, each scar, each burn a different mood or time. I told him what the first one was, I told him where the second one came from. I remembered them all. And for the first time in my life, I felt beautiful. Finally part of the earth. I touched the soil and he loved me back."
Closing scene from the film Secretary, an adaptation of the story by Gaitskill.
Closing scene from the film Secretary, an adaptation of the story by Gaitskill.
Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking
On hearing that her comatose daughter needs a tracheotomy.
“Everyone in the neuro units got a trach, they had kept saying to me that day … A trach could be done with fentanyl and a muscle relaxant, she would be under anesthesia no more than an hour. A trach would leave no cosmetic effect to speak of, ‘only a little dimple scar,’ ‘as time goes by maybe no scar at all.’ They kept mentioning this last point, as if the basis for my resistance to the trach was the scar. They were doctors, however freshly minted. I was not. Ergo, any concerns I had must be cosmetic, frivolous. In fact I had no idea why I so resisted the trach.” (125)
The Year of Magical Thinking. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2005.
“Everyone in the neuro units got a trach, they had kept saying to me that day … A trach could be done with fentanyl and a muscle relaxant, she would be under anesthesia no more than an hour. A trach would leave no cosmetic effect to speak of, ‘only a little dimple scar,’ ‘as time goes by maybe no scar at all.’ They kept mentioning this last point, as if the basis for my resistance to the trach was the scar. They were doctors, however freshly minted. I was not. Ergo, any concerns I had must be cosmetic, frivolous. In fact I had no idea why I so resisted the trach.” (125)
The Year of Magical Thinking. Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2005.
Michael Ondaatje: Anil's Ghost
About a doctor in Sri Lanka during civil war.
"His duties made him come upon strangers and cut them open without ever knowing their names. He rarely spoke. It seemed he did not approach people unless they had a wound, even if he couldn't see it..." (211)
Anil's Ghost. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
"His duties made him come upon strangers and cut them open without ever knowing their names. He rarely spoke. It seemed he did not approach people unless they had a wound, even if he couldn't see it..." (211)
Anil's Ghost. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
Jaques Derrida: Positions
"Breaks are always, and fatally, reinscribed in an old cloth that must continually, interminably, be undone." (24)
Positions. Chicago, 1981.
Positions. Chicago, 1981.
Camilla Gibb: Between Wars
“’War,’ she repeats. What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?’ she asks him then.
He lifts his shirt and shows her a belly riddled with scars.
She gasps because she is a girl who loves tough men, because she is a girl who longs for a hero, she gasps and falls in love in that instant, wants to kiss his stomach and see him punch out one of the assholes who sits in the coffee shop after his shift and drinks until he cannot restrain himself from trying to untie her apron string, to drag her down onto his lap.
Because he is a man who didn’t grow up with this American romance, Amir doesn’t know what to make of her reaction. Is she horrified? Is she sickened? Does she think he is at fault? He is embarrassed to have been so bold. But she puts her palms against his shoulders then and leans her whole body against him. He remains still while she kisses him tenderly between the sparse black hairs on his chest.” (146)
Between Wars, in Contemporary Canadian Women's Stories, Ed. Lisa Moore.
He lifts his shirt and shows her a belly riddled with scars.
She gasps because she is a girl who loves tough men, because she is a girl who longs for a hero, she gasps and falls in love in that instant, wants to kiss his stomach and see him punch out one of the assholes who sits in the coffee shop after his shift and drinks until he cannot restrain himself from trying to untie her apron string, to drag her down onto his lap.
Because he is a man who didn’t grow up with this American romance, Amir doesn’t know what to make of her reaction. Is she horrified? Is she sickened? Does she think he is at fault? He is embarrassed to have been so bold. But she puts her palms against his shoulders then and leans her whole body against him. He remains still while she kisses him tenderly between the sparse black hairs on his chest.” (146)
Between Wars, in Contemporary Canadian Women's Stories, Ed. Lisa Moore.
Jeanette Winterson: Written on the Body
“The lining of your mouth I know through tongue and spit. Its ridges, valleys, the corrugated roof, the fortress of teeth. The glossy smoothness of the inside of your upper lip is interrupted by a rough swirl where you were hurt once. The tissues of the mouth and anus heal faster than any others but they leave signs for those who care to look. I care to look. There’s a story trapped inside your mouth. A crashed car and a smashed windscreen. The only witness is the scar, jagged like a dueling scar where the skin still shows the stitches.” (117-118)
Written on the Body. Vintage International: New York, 1994.
Written on the Body. Vintage International: New York, 1994.
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