I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a deep awareness of one's environment and emotional state, using the glass of water as a metaphor for sensitivity to both nature and personal turmoil.
In this quote, Amy Hempel expresses a profound connection between the physical world and her internal feelings. The glass of water symbolizes clarity and perception; its level indicates either the tremors of the earth or the disturbances within her own mind. This interplay suggests how our emotional states can be intertwined with external realities, prompting introspection about the nature of one's existence and the duality of perception.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about mindfulness and awareness of one's surroundings.
Then the children went to bed, or at least went upstairs, and the men joined the women for a cigarette on the porch, absently picking ticks engorged like grapes off the sleeping dogs. And when the men kissed the women good night, and their weekend whiskers scratched the women's cheeks, the women did not think shave, they thought stay.
I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.
if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.
I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help.
It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse; every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow.
In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.
But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.
Many media commercials encourage us to believe that if we buy a certain product, we can be physically appealing, or popular, or successful. According to the commercial message, it may be easy to make friends and influence people if we simply do what we're told to do. It would be wonderful if that were true, but unfortunately life does not seem to work that way. What is inside of us can be much more important and influential than what is outside.
There is never a shortage anywhere of lawyers eager to attack the First Amendment, as though it were nothing more than a clause in a lease from a crooked slumlord.
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