Accepting the mixed-bag Now of our lives. Hard.

--

THE THING IS

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

-Ellen Bass
--

Full text of this episode can be found here: http://stevewasserman.co.uk/amor-fati/

--

Audio used in episode (in order of occurence):

-Jon & the Nightriders - Rumble at Waikiki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41YvSrk5paQ&t=81s

-Can't Stop The Feeling (Justin Timberlake) - Original Piano Arrangement by Maucoli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MpOfn4rDcU

-ET: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Wcggztq9SspsBeXcrnHZo?highlight=spotify:track:3VVilIGlUJ6tIirr7GGCHs

-Night Flight - Say Yes (Elliot Smith Cover): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnQ0ac8A8hk

-A Day In The Life (Orchestra Overdub): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecybFp71bnc

-Reading of The Thing Is (Ellen Bass): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JONWgsZ6vm8

-Steven C. Hayes talking about Feeling & Experiential Avoidance: https://www.soundstrue.com/collections/authors-steven-c-hayes/products/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy

-Extract from Bernard Malamud's A New Life: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Penguin-Twentieth-Century-Classics/dp/0140186816/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=a+new+life+malamud&qid=1624180687&sr=8-1

-Jane Hirshfield reading her poem Amor Fati: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/92039/amor-fati

-Extract from The Gay Science: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Gay-Science-The-Joyful-Wisdom-Audiobook/B01EWAXDI4?qid=1624180836&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=c6e316b8-14da-418d-8f91-b3cad83c5183&pf_rd_r=ZN7BMAJ44S0DHR5PPNXE

-Susan Buffam reading her poem Amor Fati: https://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/amor-fati-4435

-“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, A Poetry Film by Ana Pérez López: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFLQOOiAqxQ&t=15s

-Elliott Smith ~ Say Yes (Live in Stockholm): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOnHEApbjV0

-Itzhak Perlman plays Fiddler on the Roof (John Williams Los Angeles Philharmonic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h745la-Lo1I

-Neil De Grasse Tyson giving an overview of our 65 million year-old hominid evolutionary history: https://samharris.org/podcasts/252-alone-universe/

-Can't Stop The Feeling by Justin Timberlake Live (Downbeat LA Cover): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGz7Nbaavgg&ab_channel=DownbeatDownbeat

-Hakeem Oluseyi waxing lyrical about astrophysics: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/a-quantum-life-with-hakeem-oluseyi/

The Kings of Self-Help

Wise BloodBy Steve WassermanJan 26, 2023