Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.
Interpretation
The quote contrasts the concepts of viscosity and velocity to express the complexity of human experience and perception.
Susanna Kaysen highlights the dualities present in human behavior, illustrating how silence and stillness can arise from either a lack of inner activity (viscosity) or from deep engagement and fascination (velocity). This suggests that outward appearances may not always reflect the true nature of one's internal state, emphasizing the complexity of human emotions and perceptions.
In practice
In a psychology lecture discussing emotional responses, one might include this quote to illustrate the complexity of inner experiences.
Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.
I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. You hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.
Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.
I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and irrefutably an inward condition.
Don't separate the mind from the body. Don't separate even character - you can't. Our unit of existence is a body, a physical, tangible, sensate entity with perceptions and reactions that express it and form it simultaneously. Disease is one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her.
The great thing about a culture of givers is that's not a delusion - it's reality.
When one feels no shame in telling a deliberate lie, there is no evil, I tell you, he will not do.
The world did not have me in mind; it had no mind. It was a coincidental collection of things and people, of items, an I myself was one such item...the things in the world did not necessarily cause my overwhelming feelings; the feelings were inside me, beneath my skin, behind my ribs, withing my skull. They were even, to some extent, under my control.
An Adult faith does not follow the waves of fashion and the latest novelties.
People are looking for something a little more stable; people are feeling like they need to get closer to God.
Disneyland remains the central attraction of Southern California, but the graveyard remains our reality.
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