When I ache, I write, and transfer my emotional experience onto the page, where I am every character.
I feel what my characters are feeling, and sometimes when I write, my heart races.
Some of what I was feeling passed to Nosy, who dropped over onto his side and showed his belly in supplication while thumping his tail in that ancient canine signal that always means, ' I'm only a puppy. I cannot defend myself. Have mercy.'Had they been dogs they would have sniffed me over and then drawn back. But humans have no inbred courtesies.
Lydia and I, always two sides of the same coin. Her hurt is spilled out onto the floor, messy in a way that demands it be witnessed. Mine, shoved so deep down, my steps are heavier with the weight of it.
Left Hegelians argued that religion is a form of alienation in which the believer projects certain of his own desirable qualities onto a transcendent deity. Man is not created in God’s image, but God is created in man’s ideal image. To overcome this alienation, they argued that it is necessary to ‘reappropriate’ the human essence and to realize that the ideal qualities attributed to God are human qualities, partially realized at present but capable of being fully realized in a transformed society.
but…we are like two shattered vases, you and I. Separate events knocked us onto the floor beside each other, and I am afraid that if we continue like this, all our pieces will get horribly mixed up, and I don’t believe you actually want to be part of my vase. Nor should you. I’m a terrible, ugly vase that leaks water everywhere.
Whoever coined the slang term "dope" for drugs was onto something, because all addictions, whether to drugs or behaviors, involve dopamine. Dopamine is the essential neurotransmitter in the motivation system, without which all mammals are inert, inactive, and lacking all incentive. A hungry laboratory mouse whose brain is artificially denuded of its dopamine apparatus will starve himself while tanding in front of a plate of food. In fact, every addict is a dopamine fiend, outsourcing the hunt for the homegrown chemical hit that makes the present moment exciting and vibrant. For virtually every "positive" feeling or people derive from their substances or behavior of choice, there are endogenous -naturally occurring- brain chemicals implicated. Addiction begins as an attempt to induce feelings that we were biologically programmed to generate innately, and would have -if unhealthy development hadn't got in the way.
