Emiliana Torrini - Hold Heart

Hold heart
Don't beat so loud
For me keep your calm
As he walks out on you

No tears
Don't you come out
If you blind me now
I am defeated

No lips
Don't make a sound
Don't let him hear
The break in your voice

Hand let go of this
With ease n' grace
Don't let him bleed under your nails

Oh Lord
Take off thy crown
You're my king no more
With start merciless heart

Hold heart
Don't beat so loud
For me keep your calm
As he walks out on you

No tears
Don't you come out
If you blind me now
I am defeated

This is what the fox teaches the Little Prince.

"To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world."

"My life is very monotonous. I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."

So the prince tames the fox... and then when the hour of departure approaches the fox shares a very simple secret.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

C'est très simple, mais plein de signification.

• What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
  
  To hurt someone.
• Where would you like to live?
  
  I like it here in New York.
• What is your idea of earthly happiness?
  
  To have a nice apartment, and a job you feel challenged by. Good friends, also. 
• To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
  
  If I'm understanding this question the way it was intended, then my answer is exaggerating facts.
• Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
  
  Those who question social conventions and act upon them.
• Who are your favorite characters in history?
  
  Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I
• Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
  
  Gwen Stefani
• Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
  
  Those who can simulate foolishness to manipulate people with power and obtain what they want.
• Your favorite painter?
  
  Don't have one. 
• Your favorite musician?
  
  Chopin, Jason Mraz
• The quality you most admire in a man?
  
  Humor, Humility, Intelligence
• The quality you most admire in a woman?
  
  Beauty, Intelligence
• Your favorite virtue?
  
  the ones that apply to everyone.
• Your favorite occupation?
  
  dreaming about the future
• Who would you have liked to be?
  
  artist

So many thoughts swimming in this normally empty head of mine.

1. Among other reasons, my inability to discern where one word ends and the next begins makes French a strenuous language to comprehend. Sure, on paper it's easy as ... well, une tart.

2. Why is it that once something comes within grasp, the desire to attain it starts to wane? For example, if all I wanted was to be wealthy enough to buy expensive handbags every week, and one day I became that wealthy, would I still want to buy expensive handbags every week? Or would I still use my ratty old tote to lug my books around and carry cigarettes in?

3. Figure skating is the best activity ever. Don't argue.

4. There is a distinction between form and content. Contents are the substance of existence, but contain neither structure nor the possibility of being understood all on its own. Forms are what give these contents shape, like categories, and can appear, change, and disppear over time.  I have all these thoughts in my head, but I can't seem to express them articulately until I see something else that can offer my thoughts a satisfactory vehicle for expression.  Why can't I access these forms as readily as the contents?

5. Sleeping feels good.

I've been prepping for the LSATs since late last fall, but it wasn't until two weeks ago that I started really understanding what these questions were testing. Many question stimuli, stems and answer choices seem to hinge on the placement of a preposition, conjunction or interjecting word. I guess my greatest challenge has been re-training my brain to focus on these little words and skim through the answer choices to eliminate choices where the preposition, etc has been left out or a different (usually opposite) one inserted in its place.

It gets really difficult when you start taking question stems that ask you to look for the answer choice that weakens or directly contradicts the argument in the stimulus, because that involves taking the contrapositive (switching the order of the Sufficient - Necessary relationship, then negating both the necessary and sufficient conditions) or doing something to that effect. I'm still trying to figure out if there's a trick to this. Some questions eat up way too much time and makes me rush through the rest.

Even if I don't get the score that I want tomorrow, I'm glad that I had this exposure to "close reading".

AWWWWWW

(643 Broadway)

Seymour - An Introduction by JD Salinger, pg. 158
"It must be terrible for you to think I have neckties and things on my mind besides your story. I don't. I'm just looking everywhere for my thoughts. I thought this trivia might help me to collect myself. It's daylight out, and I've been sitting here since you went to bed."



"I'm not exactly wallowing in guilt at the moment, but guilt is guilt. It doesn't go away. It can't be nullified. It can't even be fully understood, I'm certain - its roots run too deep into private and long-standing karma. About the only thing that saves my neck when I get to feeling this way is that guilt is an imperfect form of knowledge. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it can't be used. The hard thing to do is to put it to practical use before it gets around to paralyzing you. So I'm going to write down what I think as fast as I can. If I hurry, I have a powerful feeling my guilt will serve the best and truest purposes here. I do think that. I think if I rush with this, I may be able to tell you what I've probably wanted to tell you for years."