No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters

Question 14: “Are you living your secret desires?” Floored again. I finally didn’t check Yes, Somewhat, or No, but wrote in “I have none, my desires are flagrant.”

People like me who work alone tend to be introverts and, indeed, uncouth. If piano is the opposite of forte, graceful chitchat with strangers is definitely my piano.

So evidently the cause of my anger isn’t so much jealousy or envy as, once again, fear. Fear that if Hemingway, Joyce, and Roth really are The Greatest, there’s no way I can ever be very good or very highly considered as a writer—because there’s no way I am ever going to write anything like what they write or please the readers and critics they ple

Belief has no value in itself that I can see. Its value increases as it is useful, diminishes as it is replaced by knowledge, and goes negative when it’s noxious. In ordinary life, the need for it diminishes as the quantity and quality of knowledge increase.

As for female solidarity, without it human society, I think, would not exist. But it remains all but invisible to men, history, and God.

Maybe that’s why I feel that I live in exile. I used to live in a country that had a future.

Capitalism thinks it’s adaptable, but if it only has one stratagem, endless growth, the limit of its adaptability is irrevocably set. And we have reached that limit. We are therefore at very high risk.

Can women operate as women in a male institution without becoming imitation men?

Elusiveness is the essence of fluidity.