Secret Doors

“We had never known her. They had brought us here to find that out.”
- The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

Joy

Nirrimi Joy Akanson

You shall no longer take things second or third hand... nor look through the eyes of the dead... nor feed on spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

- Walt Whitman, Song Of Myself

Death

“You know, there is no one alive now who was grown-up when I was a child. So I, as a child, am dead. Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead—when I exist in no one’s memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that old person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Who whose death will make me truly dead?”
- Love’s Executioner: “Three Unopened letters,” Dr. Irvin D. Yalom

Talking Back

Your voice in the house
That used to be empty
Silent walls when I would
Call
Now there are lost echoes
From you

Raines

EMILY: It’s your head, Detective. Just stop thinking about me.
RAINES: If you haven’t noticed I don’t exactly have complete control over my delightful imagination.
EMILY: You should talk to someone about that.
RAINES: Yeah, thanks.
- Raines, S01E06, “Inner Child”

The Humming of Bees

"When you do things like that, when you stand there and shut your mind until all you can hear is the humming of bees, people think you don’t have any feelings. They think what they see is what you feel deep inside.”

- Alice Hoffman, Blue Diary

Mad Butler

“I automatically started thinking about what I’d do if I had to prove I was sane. I’d like to think that just being my regular sane self would be evidence enough, but I’d probably behave in such an overly polite and competent manner that I’d come across like a mad butler with panic in his eyes. Plus it turns out that when I’m placed in an insane situation, I tend to get crazier.”
- Jon Ronson, This American Life podcast,Pro Se: Act One “Psychobabble”