Sufficient Champagne

frageelay replied to your quote: Enlarge this meditation upon this great world,…

I fucking love that dude. No, really.

All the sensuous metaphors I use to describe his prose wind up being sensual, verging on the pornographic. Like: I keep thinking of it as a slightly-overripe plum, biting into which causes juices to flow down one’s chin.

For what should be pretty obvious reasons, I left these Devotions out of the list I gave me analyst of what I’d been reading.

ETA: Then again, it’s not like Donne himself couldn’t be pretty damn pornographic (“Licence my roving hands, and let them go / Before, behind, between, above, below. / O, my America, my Newfoundland, / My kingdom, safest when with one man mann’d”—you are filthy, sir!). Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions even contains lines about how ironic it is that God struck him with an illness to punish him for his sins, condemning him to the very bed where he had committed so many of them.

aedison:

Wake up and go straight to the mirror. Move your head from side to side and blink rapidly, making everything seem like it’s from an old-timey movie. Quote some Citizen Kane and Casablanca. Wait until you get dizzy from the blinking, and then go lay down. You are not a Hollywood actor.

Grab a pen and paper and write down a list of your biggest fears. Next to those, write down a list of things that could destroy those fears. Notice how that second list just says “Father” over and over. Start crying, and then go lay down. You are not your father.

The next time you feel the urge to obsessively wash your hands to get rid of the foul infestation of bacteria that is crawling, always crawling, crawling all over your skin, try to picture the bacteria with a smiley face, or something. Perhaps a jaunty hat?

Repeat to yourself “I am worthy of love and attention”. If the words sound hollow, carve them into your arm with a protractor, and show them to everybody you meet. You will have their attention!

Whenever you encounter anxiety over a problem or situation, use the R.A.I.L. system! Rationalize your fears by Accelerating them to their logical extreme, then Internalize the knowledge that every chain of events will undoubtedly contribute to entropy, and Lament the inevitable heat death of the universe. Does your anxiety really makes sense anymore? No, not if the Earth is going to grow cold and dark no matter what you do!