You Feel It Just Below the Ribs

by Jeffrey Cranor

We tend not to look too closely, so we miss the fact that disease, wars, and storms linger long after they’re gone.

How many times can you filter a memory before it’s really just a fiction? How can you tell how many times your memories have been filtered?

Manners are for peace. A conscience is for peace.

History is full of dates and numbers, statistics, major events. A history textbook is a telescope’s view of the universe. You can tell stars from planets from comets, but to understand the colors of rocks, the presence of water, the tiniest frisson of life is impossible.

Comfort is dangerous. It is the illusion that nothing will ever change even when things are changing constantly, right in front of you. And this personal conservatism is seductive.

The Watercolor Quiet begins with eyes closed. There is breath, then speech. What is said is unimportant, as long as it is an interrogation of memory, of experience, of self. Each interrogation digs beneath the one before, until language dissolves into a hum, and words burst into colors. And in your mind, you can reshape and change the colors into anything. Inside the Watercolor Quiet, you are alone and active, and your world is full of light and thought. The name is deceptive, really, but honest too. It is not a state of calmness, but intense energy. It is like the ocean on a still day—smooth on the surface but with a universe of life and action underneath. It looks like inaction but it’s anything but.

“Shouldn’t you fight back?” She looked at me, a little puzzled. “Why?” she said. “What would it accomplish? Helen’s feelings aren’t my responsibility.” “But she’s hurting you,” I said. “No one can hurt me,” she said. “Only I am responsible for my own pain.”

Discontent is everywhere. It’s a constant. And discontent left to brood becomes bitterness. Anger. Fury, even.

people don’t always want things to be simpler. They want a say. They rail against authority if only to assert their own existence.

DISASTER COMES ON ORDINARY DAYS. IT’S ONE OF THOSE THINGS that’s obvious when you say it, but somehow you never really believe it to be true. But it is. Disaster comes on ordinary, nondescript, boring days. The law of numbers. Most days are ordinary, so when else would disaster come?

Well, we are all the descendants of societies we cannot understand.

A flag is not just a flag. It is a symbol of a step forward into aggression. It’s a slippery slope. A commune is a collective, a selective family connected by common cause rather than genes. It’s a slippery slope.

Nora knew that truth is a tree. It is sturdy and strong, but only after it has fully matured and weathered the brutal critique of nature. She had no weapons against brittle, determined ignorance.

It is one of the universe’s deepest and cruelest jokes that it takes a lifetime to learn the lessons you need in order to live.

Parenting is a luxury—all we had was survival.

Because even if you find out a theory is wrong, you learn so much on the way to failure that it’s worth the work.