Two things I needed to hear

1) I’ve been reading a lot of Madeleine L’Engle’s non-fiction lately. And by a lot, I mean I think I’ve read two of her books in the last 10 days or so and I’ve started on a third (obsessive personality + kindred spirit, what can I say?) I came across this passage on Sunday and it was just exactly what I needed to hear. (Does this ever happen to you? You’re inexplicably drawn to something and it makes no sense and then later it hits you square between the eyes and then you wonder why you can’t ever learn to just trust that your heart pulls in the right direction?)(Just me, then?)

From Circle of Quiet, by Madeleine L’Engle. “My husband is my most ruthless critic. Tallis runs him a close second. Sometimes he will say, ‘It’s been said better before.’  Of course. It’s all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.”

2) Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story  I listened to this TED talk yesterday (another of my obsessions! TED talks!)(yes, it appears I’ve become one of those people who reads non-fiction and listens to talks on the weekend aka my past self’s definition of a horribly boring grown-up)(Dear past self, if it helps soothe your disappointment, I also went to Cirque du Soleil! And made hot cocoa on the stove for movie night with the neighbors! And ate a lot of raw cookie dough, salmonella be damned!)  

Anyways, this was the perfect andidote to what I was feeling in the face of the very singluar ”Looters with Machetes” story currently coming out of Haiti. You should listen to it.