I’ll put it out there: I am scarred by the nostalgic indicipherability of my own desires; I an engulfed by the intimidating unknown, pushed through darkness and dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness of my memories.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complexities of desire and memory, revealing how past experiences can shape our current fears and uncertainties.
Anne Sexton's quote delves into the intricate relationship between our desires and memories, highlighting the emotional turmoil that arises from nostalgia and the challenges of confronting the unknown. It suggests that the beauty of past experiences can eventually lead to a sense of paralysis, as one grapples with the weight of what has been lost and the fear of what lies ahead. The imagery of being 'engulfed by the intimidating unknown' and 'dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness' underscores a deep sense of internal conflict, illustrating how the past can haunt us while we seek to navigate our desires in the present.
In practice
During a discussion about the impact of past relationships on present lives.
The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.
Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.
Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.
Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains.
I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.
I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...
I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
But the makers of legend have seldom rested content to regard the world's great heroes as mere human beings who broke past the horizons that limited their fellows and returned such boons as any man with equal faith and courage might have found.
The entire universe - for one thing - only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
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