Comments on: Lighter Flower

By: orinoco womble

orinoco womble — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:14:13 +0000

I’ve never read Kundera, but I have a lot of experience with laying aside baggage that is bearing you down with its burdens. In that effort I found the Bible much more helpful as a source text than any philosophy.

You are right…those who are under the harrow cannot see it pressing them down. They know they are not free, but they can’t see a way out.

“I know there’s a comical side to a toad under a harrow; the question is, does the toad see it?”–L. M. Montgomery.

By: flower

flower — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:52:58 +0000

I might add that it is one thing to recognize the difference you describe, and quite another to experience it. I’ve spent months living in unbearable lightness–which is an altogether different order of reality. Before experiencing unbearable lightness, I would have recognized the insightfulness of your reference insofar as I’ve read Kundera and was imaginatively instructed by the reading. Unbearable lightness on the inside, however, cannot see its unfreedom. Only love–i.e. real, honest, caring relationships–can help to interrupt the short circuiting in the brain that happens in the wake of a traumatic incursion of reality. Thank goodness for friends who do not give up on us when we have given up on ourselves. I like knowing that others want to help me bring myself back to life, not only so that they might listen to me singing about my travels to other side, but because they would miss my smile, for its own sake, if I were no more. I want to love other people as generously as I have been loved.

Anyway, thanks again for responding to me, orinoco womble.

By: flower

flower — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:56:49 +0000

Yes, I think you are right about this. I think your response to me addresses both this comment and my later reflection on Corinthians. Thank you, orinoco womble.

By: orinoco womble

orinoco womble — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:54:07 +0000

The difference between forgetting (laying aside as no longer necessary) and denial (blocking out) is that forgetting can be healing and a lightening of the burden; denial leads to the unbearable lightness of being, as you try to ignore what you’re still carrying.

By: flower

flower — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:05:23 +0000

Sublimity is compelling, even traumatic, and perhaps more deeply destructive than the violence of banality. I am moderately preoccupied with this question at the moment.

There are different kinds of lightness, just as there are radically different kinds of human beings. I want to become light in ways that allow me to continue to feel the call of conscience, which is another way of saying that I want to learn and grow as the kind of human I was born to be:

“the world seems to pour through you into me / even if God made me to be alone in the simplicity / that I was wished to be.”

Forgetting is lightness, yes, but one need not bear one’s suffering alone.

By: Clint

Clint — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:57:36 +0000

My roommate and I have been discussing memories we want to carve out of our heads. Just recently, he accidentally misspelled Delilah in an internet search and instead came upon pictures of the Black Dahlia murder. There are articles, accounts, pictures, and videos I’ve seen that make me queasy whenever I think about them. I’m sure I would feel much lighter without them.

By: flower

flower — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 03:17:39 +0000

So many years my body pressed hard under the weight of his body as though I were human and the world forgiving. Anyone might try to reach me, but no lips like his unyielding and no eyes so penetrating. All gesture is impotence. He touched me every time he knew me. All memory is lightness. My love, my love, why have you forsaken me?

By: rb

rb — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:26:04 +0000

Regrets, and bitterness.

By: simmy

simmy — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:46:48 +0000

memories. of people, of times. of daydreams, even. there’s a lot of them, i’m not quite sure how they’re in there because my memory is awful. but there they are. and feelings about things happening or past or hopes for the future or now.

money is certainly a problem. greed, maybe, but that’s not the word i want…

new daydreams and fantasies of things that won’t happen. things about love. but love is a minor issue, because it’ll happen when it wants to. i have immediate issues. like cleaning.

the list could go on and on…but i think i’ll stop rambling, now…

By: MalikTous

MalikTous — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 14:20:41 +0000

When I change my life, such as when I left the Navy or when I took up helping my current handicapped roomie, I dumped things I no longer needed from my mind. It makes adding the new stuff you need easier – usually…