Work is the way you occupy your mind & hand & eye and whole body, when they’re informed by your imagination & wit, by your keenest perceptions, by your most profound reflections on everything you’ve read & seen & heard and been a part of.
Work Is When You Put Off Playtime
Leaden Paralysis is a psychiatric term.
If your thought patterns & attitudes, your very sense of self, could be altered by medication, there seems little room in the equation for the soul.
The Christian existentialist conclusion is that the soul is that which chooses.
Malfunctioning receptors may sap or boost your energy. Chemical fluctuations may create a racket in your head. But you can choose your words & actions.
Choose to reject the Voice of Doom.
MY THOUGHTS ARE NOT MY THOUGHTS ~Kathleen Founds
Pneuma prothymon, hē de sarx asthenēs.
“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mark 14:38)
A Letter to Three Wives is a 1949 movie that takes place on the first Saturday in May.
Their “best friend” is announcing in the letter that she is running away with one of their husbands – but she does not say which one.
But old Dim, as soon as he’d slooshied this dollop of song like a lomtick of redhot meat plonked on your plate, let off one of his vulgarities which in this case was a lip-trump followed by a dog-howl followed by two fingers pronging twice at the air followed by a clowny guffaw.
Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Passion needs to be cultivated.
What is the best thing you can think of? Let your natural passion for existence extend to include that.
P.S. You are more likely to think of something better while you are doing something productive rather than while you are “just waiting”.
Rebirthing by Leonard & Laut
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. What do you see?–Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.
But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster–tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive.
Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice.
No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.
And there they stand–miles of them–leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues–north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling.
Thomas Merton
EDGAR
Come on, sir. Here’s the place. Stand still.
How fearful and dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air show scarce so gross as beetles.
GLOUCESTER
Set me where you stand.
King Lear (Act 4, scene 6, by Shakespeare)