She must assemble.: A few of my favorite things V

Sunday, January 6, 2013

A few of my favorite things V

Photo Source: TLT

Every Day by David Levithan

"In his New York Times bestselling novel, David Levithan introduces readers to what Entertainment Weekly calls a "wise, wildly unique" love story about A, a teen who wakes up every morning in a different body, living a different life." (Source)

"Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen."

"Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over.
I know how wrong this is.
When I was a child, I didn't understand. I would wake up in a new body and wouldn't comprehend why things felt muted, dimmer. Or the opposite--I'd be supercharged, unfocused, like a radio at top volume flipping quickly from station to station. Since I didn't have access to the body's emotions, I assumed the ones I was feeling were my own. Eventually, though, I realized these inclinations, these compulsions, were as much a part of the body as its eye color or its voice. Yes, the feelings themselves were intangible, amorphous, but the cause of the feelings was a matter of chemistry, biology."

"In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don't understand why it's so hard, when it's so obvious."

"I go to the computer as soon as I wake up the next morning. But there's no email from Rhiannon. I send her another apology. I send her more thanks for the day. Sometimes when you hit send, you can imagine the message going straight into the person's heart. But other times, like this time, it feels like the words are merely falling into a well."

"This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it's just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be."

"I run. I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body's thoughts, no goals but the body's goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line."

"Putting on makeup. Even putting on shoes. To experience her body's balance within the world, the sensation of her skin from the inside, touching her face and receiving the touch from both sides--it's unavoidable and incredibly intense. I try to think only as me, but I can't stop feeling that I'm her."

"This is how it feels to hold a pencil in her hand.
This is how it feels to fill her lungs with air.
This is how it feels to press her back against a chair.
This is how it feels to touch her ear.
This is what the world sounds like to her. This is what she hears everyday."

"This is how it feels to read words through her eyes.
This is how it feels to turn a page with her hand
This is how it feels when her ankles cross.
This is how it feels to lower her head so her hair hides her eyes from view.
This is what her handwriting looks like. This is how it is made. This is how she signs her name."

"I want to tell Rhiannon all about it. Because when something happens, she's the person I want to tell. The most basic indicator of love.
I have to resort to email, and email is not enough. I am starting to get tired of relying on words. They are full of meaning, yes, but they lack sensation. Writing to her is not the same as seeing her face as she listens. Hearing back from her is not the same as hearing her voice. I have always been grateful for technology, but now it feels as if there's a little hitch of separation woven into any digital interaction. I want to be there, and this scares me. All my usual disconnected comforts are being taken away, now that I see the greater comfort of presence."

"Every person is a possibility. The hopeless romantics feel it most acutely, but even for others, the only way to keep going is to see every person as a possibility. The more I see the Alexander that the world reflects back at him, the more of a possibility he seems. His possibility is grounded in the things that mean the most to me. Kindness. Creativity. Engagement in the world. Engagement in the possibilities of the people around him."