Sporting a new shirt today- yeah I know, i’m a dork. At least my boss thought it was cool.
As if there’s anyone on the planet left who doesn’t know how obsessed with my dog i am.
TALES FROM THE CUBE | July 17
cubicle, general nerdiness, got basset hound shirt, moose, my dog is my child, pic, tales from the cube, work
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Do not stand
At my grave and weep
I am not there,
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand
Winds that blow,
I am the diamond
Glints on snow.
I am the sunlight
On the ripened grain.
I am the gentle
Autumn’s rain.
When you awaken
In the morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet bird in
Circled flight.
I am the soft stars
That shine at night.
Do not stand
At my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die.
— Hopi Prayer, Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
— Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
The sight of that cemetery still gave Frank nightmares. Hoping to find jewelry buried with the dead, the Yankee soldiers had broken open vaults, dug up graves. They had robbed the bodies, stripped from the coffins gold and silver name plates, silver trimmings and silver handles. The skeletons and corpses, flung helter-skelter among their splintered caskets, lay exposed and so pitiful.
Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power ... that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.
— Marcel Proust
There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it.
— Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow’s Story
We are all damaged. We have all been hurt. We have all had to learn painful lessons. We are all recovering from some mistake, loss, betrayal, abuse, injustice or misfortune. All of life is a process of recovery that never ends. We each must find ways to accept and move through the pain and to pick ourselves back up. For each pang of grief, depression, doubt or despair there is an inverse toward renewal coming to you in time. Each tragedy is an announcement that some good will indeed come in time. Be patient with yourself.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
“You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still.”
— Drew Magary, The Postmortal