Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
The story we are told of women is not this one. The story of women is the story of love, of foundering into another. A slight deviation: longing to founder and being unable to. Being left alone in the foundering, and taking things into one’s own hands: rat poison, the wheels of a Russian train. Even the smoother and gentler story is still just a mo
... See moreLauren Groff • Fates and Furies
the hag-maiden, she shows us what it means to be, not withered, but wizened. Babies are born wizened with instinct. They know in their bones what is right and what to do about it. It is innate. If a woman holds on to this gift of being old while she is young and young while she is old, she will always know what comes next. If she has lost it, she c
... See moreDr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés • Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
It is right and proper that women eke out, liberate, take, make, connive to get, assert their right to go home. Home is a sustained mood or sense that allows us to experience feelings not necessarily sustained in the mundane world:
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés • Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
I’d thought I had everything in order, but the best-laid plans gang aft agley,
Margaret Atwood • The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale
Year’s End - Richard Wilbur
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen wh
... See more“I want [my daughter] to grow up in a society where she will have a comfortable and important place.”
Elaine Tyler May • Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
quixotic
Margaret Atwood • The Robber Bride
Perkins spent the twelve years of Roosevelt’s presidency doing more than anyone other than FDR himself to make the New Deal a reality. Everything on her list became law, most notably social security, changing the basic relation of Americans to their government. She also desegregated the Labor Department cafeteria, tried (and failed) to bring large
... See moreGeorge Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
The naive or injured woman is then too easily lured with promises of ease, of lilting enjoyment, of various pleasures, be they promises of elevated status in the eyes of her family, her peers, or promises of increased security, eternal love, high adventure, or hot sex.