MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

Should there be no brains under bonnets?

Yes, if you please. But the woman of the future will demand to own not brains but vigour. Yes, yes, I dare say you are vigorous too. But unless you are careful your brains will step in first and tell you that it is more dignified and reasonable to remain passive.

I see. I will be on my guard, then.’

Sound advice 😁

Do you come often here?

Constantly. To study the animals— I am working now on the fairy stories of Grimm, and in order to tell them one may have to become a fox or a bear— but more often to walk and meditate, and be peaceful and solitary. I am an expert in the unfrequented alleys, the corners where no one penetrates—

I am fascinated, she thought. I have never known such freedom, such exhilaration, as I taste in her presence. But she is indubitably out of her wits, and I suppose I shall be out of mine too, shortly…

🤗

Their words, light and taunting, rose up like bubbles delicately exploding from a wine they were to drink together. People whom they encountered turned round to stare after them. It was not common, in those lean days, to see two faces so carelessly joyful.

I heard it said the other day, that women all like vinegar for the same reason.

Nonsense! Women recruit themselves with vinegar after love. It is astringent to the nerves..

[…] Meanwhile, Sophie, you should make up your mind to one of three things: religion, love, or family life. Religion would never suit you, your temperament is too cold. Love is out of the question, too, I hope?—-

Quite.

😂

I must certainly improve on my bonnet, thought Sophia, stalking about the room in long-limbed nakedness, the London bonnet held out at arm's length. Great-aunt Leocadie had attained her third revolution, the least tribute one could pay would be a bonnet in the highest and latest fashion. Warming herself before the hearth Sophia recollected how great-aunt Leocadie had praised her for those long legs...

…she was going home, empty, hopeless and undone. She had not even the child. But in her dream it was not for the loss of the child she mourned so desperately. Something else was lost, there was some other hope, some other promise, irretrievably mismanaged and irretrievably lost; and it was for this something, this unpossessed unknown, that she mourned in such desolation, having not even the comfort of knowing…

'You think I am not very enthusiastic? I have not given them my carriage, I have not exclaimed...Perhaps you think I am not very sincere. But if you have ever longed for a thing, longed with your whole heart, with year after year of your life, longed for it with all that is noblest in you and worked for it with all that is most base and most calculating, you would understand with what desolation of spirit one...

I wept with excitement, and my mother comforted me, thinking I was afraid. But I could not explain what I felt, though I knew it was not fear. For then I knew only the wintry words of my race, such words as exile, and captivity, and bondage. I had never heard the word Liberty. But it was Liberty I acclaimed, seeing the river sweeping away its fetters, tossing its free neck under the ruined yoke.

She walked on, pleased with the adventure, thinking that perhaps the only satisfactory way of life was to live for the minute. According to that she should miss the train to Paris as she had missed the other train, remaining while her pleasure in them endured to wander through these streets... [...]

No, this train she dared not miss. To live for the minute...

Though more prosaically. A wish, half truly, half ironically felt, arose in her that she could know what manner of love it was that would take one out on a November midnight to lie embracing on the soggy turf. But one could not hope for everything, and what she wanted, what she must have, was a child.

Gaming might do; yet in its very fever it was cold, and if she were to survive, she must be warmed — she so frigid to wine and the love of man.
There was ambition. That should fit her, with her long-breathed resolution, her clear head and love of dominance. But how should a woman satisfy ambition unless acting upon and through a man? and how control a man by resolution or reason, when any pretty face or leaning

For everything would go on, and she with it, broken on the wheeling year. Next summer would come, and she would walk in the silent garden, her black dress trailing, her empty heart stuffed up like an old rat-hole with insignificant cares, her ambition for seemliness and prosperity driving her on to oversee the pruning of trees, the trimming of hedges, the tillage of her lands, the increase of her stock.

There was no doubt that, in some unsuspected way, she could have been very happy..That air, so pure and earthy, absolved one back into animal, washed off all recollections of responsibilities; one waft of wind there would blow away the cares from one’s mind, the petticoats from one’s legs, demolish all the muffle of imposed personality loaded upon one by other people, leaving one free, swift, unburdened as a fox

Even when she knew for certain that he had been many times unfaithful to her, and was again neck-deep in an adultery, she was not jealous. She was furious.
Her fury had been intensified by his choice of a woman.

She could not turn to her husband to express her pleasure, since he was walking up and down with his cigar; but indeed she had not needed to; her pleasure was sufficient without expression.

It was only what she had said that she could not remember. Out of all that letter, so swimmingly written, so clear-headedly willed, that letter which was to decide the remainder of her life, she could not remember a single phrase, a single sentence.
If I had been jealous, thought Sophia, if the last angry embers of love had smouldered in me when I wrote, I should remember my letter still.

The hardening system, so admirable, so well-proved and well-accredited, so successful in her own case, did not apply so perfectly to her children. On the nursery door the notches recording her own growth from year to year were still visible; and year by year Damian and Augusta fell short of them.

Winter will shake, Spring will try,
Summer will show if you live or die.

Tears were streaming from my eyes, but what kind of tears were they? I felt something greater than the sum of all of my emotions welling up inside of me. A feeling that I couldn't name, though it still made me cry. [...]

Where were you? You're here now.

It made me wonder why my mother moved us out here in the first place. How had it made her feel the first time that she saw this town and smelled the salty air? Had it filled her heart with dreams and expectations for this new life with her family? I realized that I'd never asked my mum about her early life, before she was a mother.

Having a child in your life was such a beautiful thing. She said that she could never say as much in public, but until she had a kid of her own, she didn't know the first thing about love. Like half of the world had been just out of reach. The thought of missing out on motherhood gave her the chills. It terrified her to think how close she came. She nearly went through life oblivious to how miraculous it was.

Over time, I realized how I felt about him. Hearing from him turned my day around. If I read something or saw some cute animal video, I wanted him to see it, too. I imagined us listening to my favorite songs together. I wanted us to talk about our favorite books and really delve into our thoughts about the world.

Sometimes I get these thoughts. What if something big happens, tomorrow, and everything changes? What if I got pregnant? Thoughts like that. Maybe they're too vague to call thoughts. I don't know. That sort of thing can just happen to you, right? The way it does to everyone else. But I don't know. For me, that someday never came.

Wake up, Natsuko, I told myself. What I wanted to do, what I was thinking about, was wrong. The biggest reason it was wrong, what donor-conceived individuals had cited as the hardest part of their experience, was the fact that the children were always left in the dark, tricked by the people closest to them. One day things would change forever. Come to find out, their whole life had been a lie.

When your lips hurt, what’s actually hurting? My lips were screaming, throbbing like crazy.

When a reporter noted the baby she was carrying and asked, 'Are you trying to send some sort of message? Is this a statement about women's rights?' she answered with a smile. 'Message? No, no. I'm a single mother. It was just the two of us at home. There wasn't anyone around, so what else could I do?'

When they gazed into each other’s eyes, they saw a world replete with promise, strong and soft. The world was there to make their dreams come true, and they could trust without a shred of doubt that it would make good on its promises.

Well, we use words to communicate, right? Still, most of our words don't actually get across. You know what I mean?
Well, our words might, but not what we're actually trying to say. That's what we're always dealing with. We live in this place, in this world, where we can share our words but not our thoughts.

So you want your body to be the way it used to be? Then why’d you even have me? Your life would have been better if you never had me. Think about how great everything would be if none of us were even born. No happiness, no sadness. Nothing would ever happen to us then. It’s not our fault that we have eggs and sperm, but we can definitely try harder to keep them from meeting.
--Midoriko