women and anger

I find myself tempted
to read Wuthering Heights as one thick stacked act of revenge
for all that life withheld from Emily.
But the poetry shows traces of a deeper explanation.
As if anger could be a kind of vocation for some women.
It is a chilly thought.

Anne Carson, The Glass Essay

danube skyscape

Comme si cette grande colère m'avait purgé du mal, vidé d'espoir, devant cette nuit chargée du signes et d'étoiles, je m'ouvrais pour la première fois à la tendre indifférence du monde. De l'éprouver si pareil à moi, si fraternel enfin, j'ai senti que j'avais été heureux, et que je l'étais encore. Pour que tout soit consommé, pour que je me sente moins seul, il me restait à souhaiter qu'il y ait beaucoup de spectateurs le jour de mon exécution et qu'ils m'accueillent avec des cris de haine.

Albert Camus, L'Étranger

These are no small feelings. Is this why the pill is in my palm?

Running away is in this blood, feel it when I press my neck to yours.

a quick exercise in patience

Leave me be I am not

Leave me be I am

Leave me be

Leave me

Leave

Joan is in the back of the ambulance, holding the hand of a young man who is slipping in and out of consciousness. While her physical body is unquestionably in the present - checking his vital signs and communicating the results to her partners - mentally she is stuck elsewhere. Her brain stumbles over the same thoughts again and again, making a firmly packed pathway out of the snowy recesses of her mind. By now the trail is worn smooth; there is no need for her to continue travelling along the path with her eyes open. It is so familiar that each branch softly brushing her side comes as no shock, and each curve of the trail is followed with premeditated ease. This is all Joan can know. Creating a new, unfamiliar pathway through the tall spruce trees of her mind is daunting and not to be contemplated.

When Teresa leaves home to study psychology her father is introduced to a whole new way of thinking. For Teresa, psychology is a way to figure out why parents leave their children. For her father, it is a method used to replace religion and (most importantly) love. Psychology is an explanation as to why the two have failed him in such spectacular ways. The study of the mind is, to him, implaceable; when targeted it seems to diminish any argument aimed against it. In Teresa's father's eyes: invincible. An old man's last obsession.