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As Anyone Who Has Received Or Dispensed Psychotherapy Knows, It's A Profession Whose Mainspring Is Love. Nearly Everyone Who Visits A Therapist Has A Love Disorder Of One Sort Or Another, And Each Has A Story To Tell - Of Love Lost Or Denied, Love Twisted Or Betrayed, Love Perverted Or Shackled To Violence. Broken Attachments Litter The Office Floors Like Pick-up Sticks. People Appear With Frayed Seams And Spilling Pockets.

-Diane Ackerman

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As Anyone Who Has

Diane Ackerman

...

As Anyone Who Has Received Or Dispensed Psychotherapy Knows, It's A Profession Whose Mainspring Is Love. Nearly Everyone Who Visits A Therapist Has A Love Disorder Of One Sort Or Another, And Each Has A Story To Tell - Of Love Lost Or Denied, Love Twisted Or Betrayed, Love Perverted Or Shackled To Violence. Broken Attachments Litter The Office Floors Like Pick-up Sticks. People Appear With Frayed Seams And Spilling Pockets.

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Like Love, Travel Makes You Innocent Again.

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I Like Handling Newborn Animals. Fallen Into Life From An Unmappable World, They Are The Ultimate Immigrants, Full Of Wonder And Confusion.

A Self Is A Frightening Thing To Waste, It's The Lens Through Which One's Whole Life Is Viewed, And Few People Are Willing To Part With It, In Death, Or Even Imaginatively, In Art.

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Love Is The Most Important Thing In Our Lives, A Passion For Which We Would Fight Or Die, And Yet We're Reluctant To Linger Over Its Names. Without A Supple Vocabulary, We Can't Even Talk Or Think About It Directly.

Because Poets Feel What We're Afraid To Feel, Venture Where We're Reluctant To Go, We Learn From Their Journeys Without Taking The Same Dramatic Risks.

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History Is An Agreed-upon Fiction.

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A Kiss Is Like Singing Into Someone's Mouth.

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We Live On The Leash Of Our Senses.

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Look At Your Feet. You Are Standing In The Sky. When We Think Of The Sky, We Tend To Look Up, But The Sky Actually Begins At The Earth.

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Horses Have Made Civilization Possible.

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Hurricane Season Brings A Humbling Reminder That, Despite Our Technologies, Most Of Nature Remains Unpredictable.

The Only And Absolute Perfect Union Of Two Is When A Baby Hangs Suspended In Its Mother's Womb, Like A Tiny Madman In A Padded Cell, Attached To Her, Feeling Her Blood And Hormones, And Moods Play Through Its Body, Feeling Her Feelings.

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In Manhattan Last Month I Heard A Woman Borrowing The Jargon Of Junkies To Say To Another, 'want To Do Some Chocolate?'

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We Evolved As Creatures Knitted Into The Fabric Of Nature, And Without Its Intimate Truths, We Can Find Ourselves Unraveling.

Things That Live By Night Live Outside The Realm Of 'normal' Time And So Suggest Living Outside The Realm Of Good And Evil, Since We Have Moralistic Feelings About Time. Chauvinistic About Our Human Need To Wake By Day And Sleep By Night, We Come To Associate Night Dwellers With People Up To No Good At A Time When They Have The Jump On The Rest Of Us And Are Defying Nature, Defying Their Circadian Rhythms.

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The Daftest Logic Brings Such Sweet Unrest.

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Smell Is The Mute Sense, The One Without Words.

Nature Neither Gives Nor Expects Mercy.

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Human Beings Are Sloshing Sacks Of Chemicals On The Move.

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Poetry Reminds Us Of The Truths About Life And Human Nature That We Knew All Along, But Forgot Somehow Because They Weren't Yet In Memorable Language.

Fear Is Danger To Your Body, But Disgust Is Danger To Your Soul.

American Writer 1803-1882 Play Is Our Brain's Favorite Way Of Learning.

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Nothing Reveals More About The Inner Life Of A People Than Their Arts.

There Is That Unique Moment When One Confronts Something New And Astonishment Begins.

A Flower's Fragrance Declares To All The World That It Is Fertile, Available, And Desirable, Its Sex Organs Oozing With Nectar. Its Smell Reminds Us In Vestigial Ways Of Fertility, Vigor, Life-force, All The Optimism, Expectancy, And Passionate Bloom Of Youth. We Inhale Its Ardent Aroma And, No Matter What Our Ages, We Feel Young And Nubile In A World Aflame With Desire.

Above All, We Ask The Poet To Teach Us A Way Of Seeing.

Words Are Small Shapes In The Gorgeous Chaos Of The World. ... They Bring The World Into Focus, They Corral Ideas, They Hone Thoughts, They Paint Watercolors Of Perception.

No Matter How Politely One Says It, We Owe Our Existence To The Farts Of Blue-green Algae.

Shaped A Little Like A Loaf Of French Country Bread, Our Brain Is A Crowded Chemistry Lab, Bustling With Nonstop Neural Conversations.imagine The Brain, That Shiny Mound Of Being, That Mouse-gray Parliament Of Cells, That Dream Factory, That Petit Tyrant Inside A Ball Of Bone, That Huddle Of Neurons Calling All The Plays, That Little Everywhere, That Fickle Pleasuredome, That Wrinkled Wardrobe Of Selves Stuffed Into The Skull Like Too Many Clothes Into A Gym Bag.

So Often Loneliness Comes From Being Out Of Touch With Parts Of Oneself. We Go Searching For Those Parts In Other People, But There's A Difference Between Feeling Separate From Others And Separate From Oneself.

A Life Like An Intricately Woven Basket, Frayed, Worn, Broken, Unraveled, Reworked, Reknit From Many Of Its Original Pieces... Life Can Survive In The Constant Shadow Of Illness, And Even Rise To Moments Of Rampant Joy, But The Shadow Remains, And One Has To Make Space For It.

I Watched Her Face Switch Among The Radio Stations Of Memory

Give A Man Enough Rope And He'll Wrap Himself Around Your Little Finger.

The Further We Distance Ourselves From The Spell Of The Present, Explored By Our Senses, The Harder It Will Be To Understand And Protect Nature's Precarious Balance, Let Alone The Balance Of Our Own Human Nature.

In The Early Years Of The Uprising, We Survived On One Meal A Day Of Horse Meat And Soup, But By The End We Ate Only Dried Peas, Dogs, Cats And Birds.

We Think Of It As A Sort Of Traffic Accident Of The Heart. It Is An Emotion That Scares Us More Than Cruelty, More Than Violence, More Than Hatred. We Allow Ourselves To Be Foiled By The Vagueness Of The Word. After All, Love Requires The Utmost Vulnerability. We Equip Someone With Freshly Sharpened Knives; Strip Naked; Then Invite Him To Stand Close. What Could Be Scarier?

Our Sense Of Safety Depends On Predictability, So Anything Living Outside The Usual Rules We Suspect To Be An Outlaw, A Ghoul.

There's No Place You Can Go On The Prairie That You Don't Hear The White Noise Of The Wind, Steady And Rough As Surf Curling Along A Non-existant Shore.

Smell Brings To Mind... A Family Dinner Of Pot Roast And Sweet Potatoes During A Myrtle-mad August In A Midwestern Town. Smells Detonate Softly In Our Memory Like Poignant Land Mines Hidden Under The Weedy Mass Of Years.

Writing Is My Form Of Celebration And Prayer.

Flying Has Changed How We Imagine Our Planet, Which We Have Seen Whole From Space, So That Even The Farthest Nations Are Ecological Neighbors. It Has Changed Our Ideas About Time. When You Can Gird The Earth At 1,000 M.p.h., How Can You Endure The Tardiness Of A Plumber? Most Of All, Flying Has Changed Our Sense Of Our Body, The Personal Space In Which We Live, Now Elastic And Swift. I Could Be In Bombay For Afternoon Tea If I Wished. My Body Isn't Limited By Its Own Weaknesses; It Can Rush Through Space.

Our Relationship With Nature Has Changed Radically, Irreversibly, But By No Means All For The Bad. Our New Epoch Is Laced With Invention. Our Mistakes Are Legion, But Our Talent Is Immeasurable.

Love Is The White Light Of Emotion.

Hit A Tripwire Of Smell And Memories Explode All At Once. A Complex Vision Leaps Out Of The Undergrowth.

I Try To Give Myself Passionately, Totally, To Whatever I'm Observing, With As Much Affectionate Curiosity As I Can Muster, As A Means Of Understanding A Little Better What Being Human Is.

We're Dabbling In Eugenics All The Time, Breeding Ideal Crops To Replace Less Aesthetic Or Nutritious Or Hardy Varieties; Leveling Forests To Graze Cattle Or Erect Shopping Malls And Condos; Planting Groves Of A Few Familiar Trees That Homeowners And Industries Prefer.

Violets Smell Like Burnt Sugar Cubes That Have Been Dipped In Lemon And Velvet.

Our Skin Is What Stands Between Us And The World.

Words Are Such Small Things, Like Confetti In The Brain, And Yet They Are Color And Clarify Everything, They Can Stain The Mind Or Warp The Feelings.

Habit, A Particularly Insidious Thug Who Chokes Passion And Smothers Love. Habit Puts Us On Autopilot.

Though Most Of Us Don't Hunt, Our Eyes Are Still The Great Monopolists Of Our Senses. To Taste Or Touch Your Enemy Or Your Food, You Have To Be Unnervingly Close To It. To Smell Or Hear It, You Can Risk Being Further Off. But Vision Can Rush Through The Fields And Up The Mountains, Travel Across Time, Country, And Parsecs Of Outer Space, And Collect Bushel Baskets Of Information As It Goes. Animals That Hear High Frequencies Better Than We Do

In The Winter, I Enjoy Cross-country Skiing And Raising Orchids And Amaryllises. If I Could Grow Tropical Flowers As Perennials, I Would, Especially Hibiscus And Mandavilla.

Life Is A Thing That Mutates Without Warning, Not Always In Enviable Ways. All Part Of The Improbable Adventure Of Being Alive, Of Being A Brainy Biped With Giant Dreams On A Crazy Blue Planet.

Love, Like Truth, Is The Unassailable Defense.

We Can't Enchant The World, Which Makes Its Own Magic; But We Can Enchant Ourselves By Paying Deep Attention

Disassociating, Mindfulness, Transcendence-whatever The Label-it's A Sort Of Loophole In Our Contract With Reality, A Form Of Self-rescue.

People Search For Love As If It Were A City Lost Beneath The Desert Dunes, Where Pleasure Is The Law, The Streets Are Lined With Brocade Cushions, And The Sun Never Sets.

If A Mind Is Just A Few Pounds Of Blood, Urea, And Electricity, How Does It Manage To Contemplate Itself, Worry About Its Soul, Do Time-and-motion Studies, Admire The Shy Hooves Of A Goat, Know That It Will Die, Enjoy All The Grand And Lesser Mayhems Of The Heart ?

What An Odd, Ruminating, Noisy, Self-interrupting Conversation We Conduct With Ourselves From Birth To Death.

Adventure Is Not Something You Travel To Find. It's Something You Take With You, Or You're Not Going To Find It When You Arrive.

Working From Home Meant We Could Vary Snack And Coffee Breaks, Change Our Desks Or View, Goof Off, Drink On The Job, Even Spend The Day In Pajamas, And Often Meet To Gossip Or Share Ideas. On The Other Hand, We Bossed Ourselves Around, Set Impossible Goals, And Demanded Longer Hours Than Office Jobs Usually Entail. It Was The Ultimate "flextime," In That It Depended On How Flexible We Felt Each Day, Given Deadlines, Distractions, And Workaholic Crescendos.

Adult Bats Don't Weigh Much. They're Mainly Fur And Appetite.

Variety Is The Pledge That Matter Makes To Living Things.

As A Species, We've Somehow Survived Large And Small Ice Ages, Genetic Bottlenecks, Plagues, World Wars And All Manner Of Natural Disasters, But I Sometimes Wonder If We'll Survive Our Own Ingenuity.

Couples Are Jigsaw Puzzles That Hang Together By Touching In Just Enough Points.

The Heart Is A Museum, Filled With The Exhibits Of A Lifetime's Loves.

I Don't Want To Get To The End Of My Life And Find That I Lived Just The Length Of It. I Want To Have Lived The Width Of It As Well.

I Consider Fiction A Very High-class Form Of Lying. I Enjoy And Admire It Enormously, But I Don't Think I'm Very Good At It.

I Don't Want To Be A Passenger In My Own Life.

Knowing Who You Are

Wonder Is A Bulky Emotion. When You Let It Fill Your Heart And Mind, There Isn't Room For Anxiety, Distress Or Anything Else.

After All, Coffee Is Bitter, A Flavor From The Forbidden And Dangerous Realm.

To Begin To Understand The Gorgeous Fever That Is Consciousness, We Must Try To Understand The Senses And What They Can Tell Us About The Ravishing World We Have The Privilege To Inhabit.

Look In The Mirror. The Face That Pins You With Its Double Gaze Reveals A Chastening Secret.

Knowing Who You Are

Keeping Secrets

For The Longest Time I Didn't Realize I Was Creative - I Just Thought I Was Strange.

Habitats Keep Evolving New Pageants Of Species, And We Shouldn't Interfere.

I Hate The Fearful Trimming Of Possibilities That Age Brings.

The Knowing, I Told Myself, Is Only A Vapor Of The Mind, And Yet It Can Wreck Havok With One's Sanity.

If We Mammals Don't Get Something To Eat Every Day Or Two, Our Temperature Drops, All Our Signs Fall Off, And We Begin To Starve. Living At Biological Red Alert, It's Not Surprising How Obsessed We Are With Food; I'm Just Amazed We Don't Pace And Fret About It All The Time.

Culture Is What People Invent When They Have Lost Nature.

The Great Affair, The Love Affair With Life, Is To Live As Variously As Possible, To Groom One's Curiosity Like A High-spirited Thoroughbred, Climb Aboard, And Gallop Over The Thick, Sunstruck Hills Every Day.

The Great Affair, The Love Affair With Life, Is To Live As Variously As Possible, To Groom One's Curiosity Like A High-spirited Thoroughbred, Climb Aboard, And Gallop Over The Thick, Sun-struck Hills Every Day. Where There Is No Risk, The Emotional Terrain Is Flat And Unyielding, And, Despite All Its Dimensions, Valleys, Pinnacles, And Detours, Life Will Seem To Have None Of Its Magnificent Geography, Only A Length. It Began In Mystery, And It Will End In Mystery, But What A Savage And Beautiful Country Lies In Between.

Knee-deep In The Cosmic Overwhelm, I’m Stricken By The Ricochet Wonder Of It All: The Plain Everythingness Of Everything, In Cahoots With The Everythingness Of Everything Else.

There Is A Way Of Beholding Nature Which Is A Form Of Prayer, A Way Of Minding Something With Such Clarity And Aliveness That The Rest Of The World Recedes. It . . . Gives The Brain A Small Vacation.

The Senses Don't Just Make Sense Of Life In Bold Or Subtle Acts Of Clarity, They Tear Reality Apart Into Vibrant Morsels And Reassemble Them Into A Meaningful Pattern.

Living With Anyone For Many Years Takes Skill. To Keep Peace In The Household, Couples Learn To Adapt To One Another, Hopefully In Positive Ways.

Nothing Is More Memorable Than A Smell. One Scent Can Be Unexpected, Momentary And Fleeting, Yet Conjure Up A Childhood Summer Beside A Lake In The Mountains; Another, A Moonlit Beach; A Third, A Family Dinner Of Pot Roast And Sweet Potatoes During A Myrtle-mad August In A Midwestern Town. Smells Detonate Softly In Our Memory Like Poignant Land Mines Hidden Under The Weedy Mass Of Years. Hit A Tripwire Of Smell And Memories Explode All At Once. A Complex Vision Leaps Out Of The Undergrowth.

Love Is The Best School, But The Tuition Is High And The Homework Can Be Painful.

We Humans Are Obsessed With Lights...perhaps It Is Our Way Of Hurling The Constellations Back At The Sky.

Success Produces Success, Just As Money Produces Money.

Positive Attitude

The Brain Is Only Three Pounds Of Blood, Dream, And Electricity, And Yet From That Mortal Stew Come Beethoven's Sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's Jazz. Audrey Hepburn's Wish To Spend The Last Month Of Her Life In Somalia, Saving Children.

I Swear I Will Not Dishonor My Soul With Hatred, But Offer Myself Humbly As A Guardian Of Nature, As A Healer Of Misery, As A Messenger Of Wonder, As An Architect Of Peace.

As Anyone Who Has Received Or Dispensed Psychotherapy Knows, It's A Profession Whose Mainspring Is Love. Nearly Everyone Who Visits A Therapist Has A Love Disorder Of One Sort Or Another, And Each Has A Story To Tell - Of Love Lost Or Denied, Love Twisted Or Betrayed, Love Perverted Or Shackled To Violence. Broken Attachments Litter The Office Floors Like Pick-up Sticks. People Appear With Frayed Seams And Spilling Pockets.

Don't Just Live The Length Of Your Life - Live The Width Of It As Well.

There Is A Furnace In Our Cells, And When We Breathe We Pass The World Through Our Bodies, Brew It Lightly, And Turn It Loose Again, Gently Altered For Having Known Us.

For If I Do Something, I Never Do It Thoughtlessly.

I'm Certainly Not Opposed To Digital Technology, Whose Graces I Daily Enjoy And Rely On In So Many Ways. But I Worry About Our Virtual Blinders.

For Better Or Worse, Zoos Are How Most People Come To Know Big Or Exotic Animals. Few Will Ever See Wild Penguins Sledding Downhill To Sea On Their Bellies, Giant Pandas Holding Bamboo Lollipops In China Or Tree Porcupines In The Canadian Rockies, Balled Up Like Giant Pine Cones.

My Mother Always Said I Must Be Part Mongolian Because Of My Lotus-pale Complexion And Squid-ink Black Hair.

When I Set A Glass Prism On A Windowsill And Allow The Sun To Flood Through It, A Spectrum Of Colors Dances On The Floor. What We Call "white" Is A Rainbow Of Colored Rays Packed Into A Small Space. The Prism Sets Them Free. Love Is The White Light Of Emotion.

Though We Marry As Adults, We Don't Marry Adults. We Marry Children Who Have Grown Up And Still Rejoice In Being Children, Especially If We're Creative.

An Occasion, Catalyst, Or Tripwire?permits The Poet To Reach Into Herself And Haul Up Whatever Nugget Of The Human Condition Distracts Her At The Moment, Something That Can't Be Reached In Any Other Way.

Part Of The Irony Of Environmentalism Is Questing For Solutions When You Know You're Part Of The Problem.

The Idea Of Safety Had Shrunk Into Particles - One Snug Moment, Then The Next. Meanwhile, The Brain Piped Fugues Of Worry And Staged Mind-theaters Full Of Tragedies And Triumphs, Because Unfortunately, The Fear Of Death Does Wonders To Focus The Mind, Inspire Creativity, And Heightens The Senses. Trusting One's Hunches Only Seems Gamble If One Has Time For Seem; Otherwise The Brain Goes On Autopilot And Trades The Elite Craft Of Analysis For The Best Rapid Insights That Float Up From Its Danger Files And Ancient Bag Of Tricks.

One Of The Things I Like Best About Animals In The Wild Is That They're Always Off On Some Errand. They Have Appointments To Keep. It's Only We Humans Who Wonder What We're Here For.

We Tend To Think Of Heroes Only In Terms Of Violent Combat, Whether It's Against Enemies Or A Natural Disaster. But Human Beings Also Perform Radical Acts Of Compassion; We Just Don't Talk About Them, Or We Don't Talk About Them As Much.

Touch Seems To Be As Essential As Sunlight.

I'm Sure Civilizations Will Still Evolve Through Play, Or Rather As Play, Since That Seems To Be A Fundamental Mechanism Of Our Humanity.

Wonder Is The Heaviest Element On The Periodic Table. Even A Tiny Fleck Of It Stops Time.

If Cynicism Is Inevitable As One Ages, So Is The Yearning For Innocence. To Children Heaven Is Being An Adult, And To Adults Heaven Is Being Children Again.

Of All The Errands Life Seems To Be Running, Of All The Mysteries That Enchant Us, Love Is My Favorite

Despite Not Knowing If What He Felt From Moment To Moment Would Pass Or Last Forever, He Entered Fully Into His Shifting States Of Violent Rage, Self-pity, Longing, Heartbreak, Cynicism, Without Losing The Ability To Think About What Was Happening To Him. That Took Courage, I Thought, Living With The Suffering In A Mindful Way, As An Artifact Of Being, Neither Good Nor Bad.

Love Is Like A Batik Created From Many Emotional Colors, It Is A Fabric Whose Pattern And Brightness May Vary.

It's Essential To Tailor Rehab To What Impassions Someone. The Brain Gradually Learns By Riveting Its Attention-through Endless Repetitions.

An Animal On A Leash Is Not Tamed By The Owner. The Owner Is Extending Himself Through The Leash To That Part Of His Personality Which Is Pure Dog, That Part Of Him Which Just Wants To Eat, Sleep, Bark, Hump Chairs, Wet The Floor In Joy, And Drink Out Of A Toilet Bowl.

It's Animal By Animal That You Save A Species.

Symbolic Of Life, Hair Bolts From Our Head[s]. Like The Earth, It Can Be Harvested, But It Will Rise Again. We Can Change Its Color And Texture When The Mood Strikes Us, But In Time It Will Return To Its Original Form, Just As Nature Will In Time Turn Our Precisely Laid-out Cities Into A Weed-way.

When You Consider Something Like Death, After Which (there Being No News Flash To The Contrary) We May Well Go Out Like A Candle Flame, Then It Probably Doesn't Matter If We Try Too Hard, Are Awkward Sometimes, Care For One Another Too Deeply, Are Excessively Curious About Nature, Are Too Open To Experience, Enjoy A Nonstop Expense Of The Senses In An Effort To Know Life Intimately And Lovingly.

When I Go Biking, I Am Mentally Far Far Away From Civilization. The World Is Breaking Someone Else's Heart.

And Yet, Words Are The Passkeys To Our Souls. Without Them, We Can't Really Share The Enormity Of Our Lives.

It Began In Mystery, And It Will End In Mystery, But What A Savage And Beautiful Country Lies In Between.

For Me, Life Offers So Many Complexly Appealing Moments That Two Beautiful Objects May Be Equally Beautiful For Different Reasons And At Different Times. How Can One Choose?

We Have Vexed And Bothered Every Plant And Every Animal On Every Continent.

Ecstasy Is What Everyone Craves - Not Love Or Sex, But A Hot-blooded, Soaring Intensity, In Which Being Alive Is A Joy And A Thrill. That Enravishment Doesn't Give Meaning To Life, And Yet Without It Life Seems Meaningless.

Happiness Doesn't Require Laughter, Only Well-being And A Sense That The World Is Breaking Someone Else's Heart, Not Mine.

We Try To Exile Ourselves More And More From Nature - Not Always Consciously: We Build Houses; We Dismiss Nature; Nature Has To Be Outside, Because We're Inside. God Forbid Something Like A Cockroach Comes Inside, Or Some Dust.

The Biggest Threat To The Religious Experience May Well Come From Organized Religion Itself.

It's So Acceptably Easy For A Woman Not To Strive Too Hard, Not To Be Too Adventure-crazed, Not To Take Too Many Risks, Not To Enjoy Sex With Full Candor ... It Isn't Seemly For A Woman To Have That Much Zest.

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Geoffrey Holder

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