From my journal for Saturday, September 17<\/p>\n
Reading Krista Tippett writing about taking a break this last summer, giving herself time to think, feel, and write \u2014 she says that writing with hand and pen<\/a> puts you more in touch with deeper parts of yourself.\u00a0Also in At the Root of this Longing<\/a>, Carol Lee Flinders explores the question of enclosure and how, when it\u2019s freely chosen, it can help a woman go through a growth cycle.\u00a0 <\/span>And also The Daily Good led to a description of a book called Bittersweet<\/a>, which suggested another set of complex emotional experiences.\u00a0 <\/span>I read about them and feel frustrated, they are talking about something I\u2019ve never experienced, something I can\u2019t understand.\u00a0 <\/span>This may be part of my low thyroid diminution of my intellectual function, or it may be how I lived my life, suppressing my intuition, trusting only my intellect.\u00a0 <\/span>But no, I remember as a teenager, galloping up the third hill over, the music of Brazil in my mind and some sense of emotional complexity I couldn\u2019t name.<\/p>\n
Too much.\u00a0 <\/span>On the Marginalian about Bittersweet was a YouTube version of Nina Simone<\/a> singing Suzanne which sent me on to find Suzanne by Judy Collins<\/a> \u2014 the first version I learned \u2014 and could barely listen to today because it was so painful.\u00a0 <\/span>Then there was someone talking about the complexity of the song<\/a> both musically and poetically.\u00a0 <\/span>First she describes the music \u2014 all three verses different, then her interpretation, then what she learned from Leonard Cohen\u2019s own words and from Suzanne herself.\u00a0 <\/span>Fascinating, many layered, nuanced, I can feel in my body the sense of bitter and sweet, longing and grief…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The woman who talks about Suzanne is Tamsin Jones.<\/p>\n
I see this is what I\u2019ve been longing for.\u00a0 <\/span>This complexity \u2014 emotional, spiritual, physical.\u00a0 <\/span>What does she say?\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cthe liminal space between the spiritual, the physiological, and the psychological.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is Maria Popova in the Marginalian, where she talks about Susan Cain’s book Bittersweet:\u00a0“It is an act of quiet courage for Cain to reckon with these questions in a culture that so readily cosigns the verdict on matters of complexity with a bellicose X illiterate of nuance. For these are indeed complex, nuanced matters beyond easy binaries, murky even as a spectrum \u2014 where do the fertile blues of melancholy<\/a> end and the deadening black of depression<\/a> begin? The bittersweet \u2014 this enchanted loom of longing on which we weave the tapestry of meaning \u2014 exits in the liminal space between the spiritual, the physiological, and the psychological. It is an orientation of the soul laced with neurochemistry and chance<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From my journal for Saturday, September 17 Reading Krista Tippett writing about taking a break this last summer, giving herself time to think, feel, and write \u2014 she says that writing with hand and pen puts you more in touch … Continue reading