Words For Emotions or A Collections Of Quotes From "Middlesex" By Jeffrey Eugenides

I gleaned quite a collection of quotes from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. The first is about the lack of words for emotions, surely everyone has felt this at one time or another...

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. [...] I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar."

Whereas, the quote: "Mr. da Silva had a relevant quotation for everything that happened to him and in this way evaded real life." seems to point much more personally to me.

This next quote comes from an eighth grade girls locker room. Listen to the poetry:

Moving through the humid air, I felt like a snorkeler. On I came [...] gaping [...] at the fantastic underwater life all around me. Sea anemones sprouted from between my classmates' legs. The came in all colors, black, brown, electric yellow, vivid red. Higher up, their breasts bobbed like jellyfish, softly pulsing, tipped with stinging pink. [...] My classmates were as unastonished by their extravagant traits as a blowfish is by its quills.

I have long said that, if I get reincarnated as an animal, I would want to be a sea anemone; and this description doesn't do anything to change my mind.

And finally, a quote that reflects my own emotional realizations of late.

I understood at those times what I was leaving behind: the solidarity of a shared biology. Women know what it means to have a body. They understand its difficulties and failities, its glories and pleasures. Men think their bodies are theirs alone. They tend them in private, even in public.

Can't you see why I so enjoy Eugenides' writing. If you haven't yet read Middlesex do so now.

"This Too Shall Pass" or How I Live With Depression

Well, I wasn't planning to use this blog as a personal/emotional journal, but tonight it seems like the perfect place.

If you know me, then you know several key facts about me: I laugh loudly and often; I use huge gestures that match my fat body; and I suffer depression. Actually, my diagnosis is for clinical depression, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and anxiety disorder. Sometimes it shows more than others.

I just recently recovered from an adverse medication change that sent me spiraling into anxiety, nightmares and eventually depression. My meds have been changed back, and I recovered pretty quickly. But tonight, I struggle with it yet again.

This January, I got a part time job tutoring math after almost 4 years of unemployment and being on disability. It's really the perfect job for getting my feet wet again. I'm only working about 10 hours a week (though the job is actually supposed to be 15), it's impossible for me to be behind, and there is never anything (physical or emotional) for me to take home.

I breezed through the first quarter. Alright, that's a blatant lie.. though it seems like it, when I actually think back to it, it was hard. I had expected going back to work to be difficult, and it was at least three times harder than I expected. But I made it.

Now I'm at the half way mark for the second quarter, and every day I don't quit is a success. I'm just so exhausted and tired of being "on" every day. I don't know if this is just a readjustment period that I'll have to go through, or if this isn't the right time/job.

When I completed therapy (those aren't words you hear very often {and you didn't "hear" them this time either}) I bought myself a ring with the quote "This Too Shall Pass" carved on it in both English and Hebrew. It's an easy thing to say, but a life saving viewpoint if you can really grasp it. No depression lives for ever, I won't get mad and stay that way for the rest of my life, everything that I experience will, eventually, pass.

And so I try to remember that now. But I don't know how it will pass.. Will I readjust to working and being around people so much? Or will I quit this job and let it pass that way?
I don't know.. and I hate not knowing.

05-05-05 or I'm A Math Geek

Well, being a math geek, I couldn't help but notice that not only is today Cinco de Mayo, but the date is 05-05-05. Clearly this occasion (once in a lifetime for most of us) calls for a math quote. One of my roommates (another math/sci geek) had a great tag line, of which I only remember the roughest outlines: Due to some science theory or other, "there is a small, but none zero, chance that" my payment may cease to exist. Like I said, very rough, but the important part is there. I use the phrase "There is a small, but none zero chance that" quite a bit. And now, you know where it came from. Isn't your life so much the richer?

"Stupid People Shouldn't Breath" or Why I Needed A Second Blog

I've already got one blog, why would I need another one? It comes down to the fact that D'nah Reads-A-Lot doesn't represent me very well. The template I chose is very nice, dignified and appropriate for the sort of book reviews I hope to do. But there's a lot more to me than that. I tend to be more quirky or exuberant than dignified and..

I love quotes! I collect them from, and keep them, everywhere. It's hard to find a container in my possession that doesn't have one or two quotes written on scraps of paper, napkins, even coded on the back of fortune cookie fortunes.

But somehow, I had allowed this bit of self knowledge to slip away. Until yesterday. Yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker that said "Stupid people shouldn't breed" and it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes: "Stupid people shouldn't breath." No, that's not a typo. Let me tell you the story.

One semester, when I lived in the dormitory at college I had a roommate that I didn't really get along with, but we managed. I took a dry erase marker and wrote my current quote on the mirror. Roomie didn't like this, she didn't like seeing the words show up on her face, so we compromised, and I wrote only on my half of the mirror.

This worked for a while, but one of Roomie's friends, in a fit of frustration on Roomie's behalf, wrote a message on the other side of the mirror. And I kid you not, but what it said was (the by now infamous) STUPID PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BREATH. My friends and I (being intellectual snobs and able to spell breathe) found this hilarious and made reference to it not infrequently.

So when I saw that bumper sticker today, this all came back to me. And I could not help but think that what I really wanted, was a blog about quotes. Most, though not all, of my movie and book posts have a quote in them, but I wanted something more. A place to revel in quotes! Sometimes from movies or books, though more often from overheard or remembered conversations. Sometimes with some background information, insight or story. And sometimes, just to throw out those quotes, completely unadorned.

So that's what this is. I just want to share with you, Dear Reader, a quote, with or without baggage.