This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eleanor Brown, fully Nora Eleanor Louisa Hervey Brown
We all have stories we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves we are too fat, too ugly, or too old, or too foolish. We tell ourselves these stories because they allow us to excuse our actions, and they allow us to pass off the responsibility for things we have done-maybe to something within our control, but anything other than the decisions we have made.
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
She thought she need not worry about her youth; it wasted itself spontaneously, like sunshine elsewhere or firelight in an empty room.
So tedious is this day as is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them. Romeo and Juliet (Juliet at III, ii)
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, you owe me no subscription: then let fall your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, a poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man: but yet I call you servile ministers, that have with two pernicious daughters join'd your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head so old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!
I am a better person when I have less on my plate.
I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven and unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business?
Sweet, bid me hold my tongue, for in this rapture I shall surely speak the thing I shall repent.
Both the five-year-olds looked at me with bewilderment and a bit of fearful uncertainty. I had a sudden horrifying image of the woman I might become if I'm not careful: Crazy Aunt Liz. The divorcee in the muumuu with the dyed orange hair who doesn't eat dairy but smokes menthols, who's always just coming back from her astrology cruise or breaking up with her aroma-therapist boyfriend, who reads the Tarot cards of kindergarteners and says things like, Bring Aunty Liz another wine cooler, baby, and I'll let you wear my mood ring...
Capacity | Heart | Little | Love | Mortal | Taste | Thought | Thought |
I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it. Then I remembered that line from Jaws and couldn't help smiling: 'We're gonna need a bigger boat.
But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?
Stay we no longer, dreaming of renown, But sound the trumpets, and about our task.
As I got older, I discovered that nothing within me cried out for a baby. My womb did not seem to have come equipped with that famously ticking clock. Unlike so many of my friends, I did not ache with longing whenever I saw an infant. (Though I did ache with longing, it is true, whenever I saw a good used-book shop)
Contentment | Distress | Focus | Friend | Global | Search | Sorrow | Suffering | Unhappiness | World | Trouble |