7 & 7: Intimate vs. Impersonal

REFLECTION:

To have enough inside to give away is not enough. For it is not the same as the giving itself. To allow oneself to soar, in moments of revelry, risks a fall, an injury. We all know that. But to pull back, to self-protect, means losing what the person hopes to save. Barriers once constructed, grow taller but no more protective. And they offend our instincts, our nature to have our hearts reach out. Each woman, each man is a person worth meeting, greeting, knowing, loving. Each has worth, value, goodness. Each deserves comfort, touch and intimacy. To lose the ability to connect with other persons, to become impersonal is doubly regressive. First you lose the hearts and souls of the relations, and second you suffer the self-recrimination of recognizing the deafening and deadening of your own spirit.

MUSES:

To make a prairie it takes clover and one bee
one clover, and a bee,
and revelry
the revelry alone will do,
if bees are few.

Emily Dickinson

We are adhering to life now with our last muscle – the heart.
Djuna Barnes

Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about a man.
E. B. White

I feel bad that I don’t feel worse.
Michael Frayn