The Weight of Ink

Never underestimate the passion of a lonely mind.

People go through life trying to please some audience. But once you realize there’s no audience, life is simple. It’s just doing what you know in your gut is right.

Our life is a walk in the night, we know not how great the distance to the dawn that awaits us. And the path is strewn with stumbling blocks and our bodies are grown tyrannous with weeping yet we lift our feet. We lift our feet.

A definition of loneliness surfaced in his mind: when you suddenly understand that the story of your life isn’t what you thought it was.

Love must be, then, an act of truth-telling, a baring of mind and spirit just as ardent as the baring of the body. Truth and passion were one, and each impossible without the other.

She'd spent the decades barricading herself from life, setting the conditions for love so high no one else could ever meet them. Few, in fact, had made any effort. It was a simple thing, in the end, to hide in plain sight. The world did not prevent you from becoming what you were determined to become.

Nature gave a woman not only body but also intelligence, and a wish to employ it. Was it then predetermined that one side of Ester’s nature must suffocate the other? If two of God’s creations were opposed, must it be that God decided in advance that one was more perfect and therefore must be victorious? Did God determine before each storm that either the wind or the oak tree must prevail, one being more dear to Him? Or perhaps, rather, the storm itself was God’s most prized creation—and only through it could the contest between wind and oak tree be resolved, and one proven hardier. Perhaps—she trembled at her own heresy—the storm itself was God.

The saving of a life is equal in merit to the saving of the world. So it is said, he who saves one life saves a world. Yet if this was so, then what exactly was meant by world? Were there worlds of different size and merit? Or was the world of one soul as capacious as the world that contained all of creation—infinite, even? Was Ester’s world, peopled by her parents and her brother, equal to all the others God had created?

For every loyalty, whether to self or community, does impose a blindness, and each love does threaten to blur vision, as few can bear to see truth if it harm that which is dear to us.

You’re American,” she said simply. “You think straightforwardness is a virtue.

She had seen early in life that there was none in this world to audit one's soul. A man could deform himself into the most miserable of creatures, and no holy hand would descend from the clouds and cry Halt. And if there was no auditor, then one must audit one's own soul, tenaciously and without mercy.

The greatest act of love—indeed, the only religion she could comprehend—was to speak the truth about the world. Love must be, then, an act of truth-telling, a baring of mind and spirit just as ardent as the baring of the body. Truth and passion were one, and each impossible without the other.

What is the purpose of study?” the rabbi had asked. She’d said, “That the spirit be clothed in reason, which is more warming than ignorance.” The rabbi had corrected, gently, “Yet the text we studied said knowledge, Ester, not reason.” And she’d countered, “But reason is more warming, for it seeds knowledge. But knowledge can grow nothing outside itself.” The rabbi had smiled then, though with a furrowed brow. “You have a good mind,” he’d said after a moment.

Do you wonder, ever,” said Ester quietly, “whether our own will alters anything? Or whether we’re determined to be as we are by the very working of the world?

How wrong she'd been, to believe a mind could reign over anything. For it did not reign even over itself...and despite all the arguments of all the philosophers, Esther now saw that thought proved nothing. Had Descartes, near his own death, come at last to see his folly? The mind was only an apparatus within the mechanism of the body - and it took little more than a fever to jostle a cog, so that the gear of thought could no longer turn. Philosophy could be severed from life. Blood overmastered ink. And every thin breath she drew told her which ruled her.

That he had not the slightest idea who he was without praise, without steady advancement toward a degree and title, without organized competition for some elite goal?

And she thought: don’t trust love unless you can see what it costs the lover.

She had devoted her life to remembering. And yet she’d failed. She had, somewhere across the years, forgotten what she’d once understood. What Ester Velasquez had understood. That desire was the only truth worth following.

Yet sacrifice of the self is everywhere viewed as the highest calling, and the more so for a woman, who must give every element of her life to others. Kindness is at all times counseled to women, who are called unnatural if not kind. Yet how can a kindness that blights the life of even one--though it benefit others--be called good? Is it in face kindness to sever oneself from one's own desires? Mustn't the imperative to protect all life encompass--even for a woman--her own? Then we must abandon our accustomed notion of a woman's kindness, and forge a new own.

Men, perhaps, might nourish both heart and mind, but for a woman there could be no such luxury... How readily the rules of female behavior--gentleness, acquiescence, ever-mindfulness--turn to shackles. So, she thought, there must be declared a new kind of virtue: one that made the throwing off of such rules, and even such deceit as this required, praiseworthy.

I don’t think I’m strong enough,” Aaron said. Slowly the steam faded from the pub’s windows. Helen was staring across the street as well. She said, “How do you think people get strong?

I understand why we sleep. To slip the knot of the world.

woman must have a heart made of something tougher, or she dies when a first blow comes.

Sentiment would undo her - each of its ties were a tether that would hold her from her purpose. Men, perhaps, might nourish both heart and mind; but for a woman there could be no such luxury. Had not Catherine drowned in the London air while practicing the virtues of love and obedience? How readily the rules of female behavior - gentleness, acquiescence, ever-mindfulness - turned to shackles.

Do not consider then, however learned you are, that your knowledge is complete. For learning is the river of G-d and we drink of it throughout our lives.

Life is muddy. Denying that—thinking there’s only one noble path above the fray—can be a poisonous approach to life.

Indeed, for the first time in her life she almost could see her heart, and to her astonishment it seemed a brave and hopeful thing: a small wooden cup of some golden liquid, brimming until it spilled over all...

A woman such as I is a rocky cliff against which a man tests himself before retreating to safe pastures. I cannot fault any such man as takes what ease the world offers him.