Somatic Glimmers Quotes

Into sleep's benthos and deeper. A slander that the deepest parts are lightless. There are moments of phosphor with animal movement. Somatic glimmers, and in the trench of sleep those lights were tiny dreams. ~ China Mieville

I get glimmers of the bad nineteenth-century teaching which has made Mother remove God from the realm of mystery and beauty and glory, but why do people half my age think that they don't have faith unless their faith is small and comprehensible and like a good old plastic Jesus? ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Humanity's "progress of knowledge" and the "evolution of consciousness" have too often been characterized as if our task were simply to ascend a very tall cognitive ladder with graded hierarchical steps that represent successive developmental stages in which we solve increasingly challenging mental riddles, like advanced problems in a graduate exam in biochemistry or logic. But to understand life and the cosmos better, perhaps we are required to transform not only our minds but our hearts. For the whole being, body and soul, mind and spirit, is implicated. Perhaps we must go not only high and far but down and deep. Our world view and cosmology, which defines the context for everything else, is profoundly affected by the degree to which all out faculties–intellectual, imaginative, aesthetic, moral, emotional, somatic, spiritual, relational–enter the process of knowing. How we approach "the other," and how we approach each other, will shape everything, including out own evolving self and the cosmos in which we participate. ~ Richard Tarnas

If a person refuses to develop his potential, it can lead to nervous or mental disorders, somatic diseases and personal degradation ~ Sunday Adelaja

Tonight, I should watch the sun set, and think of the impending darkness as a metaphor for my wasted life: once it was bright, and full of potential, and now it is dark and hopeless and bleak. I should not make the mistake of thinking that the moon and the stars represent slim glimmers of hope, or evidence that there is light on the other side. Even if there is light somewhere I will never walk in it again. ~ John S. Hall

There are no heroes here, at least not of the Schindler's List variety, but there are glimmers of heroism and people who behave with unexpected grace. ~ Erik Larson

Like everyone, I had,on many previous occasions, ignored a half-open door leading elsewhere - in the chilly passages of strange houses, in backyards, on the outskirts of towns. The frontier of our world is not far away; it doesn't run along the horizon or in the depths. It glimmers faintly close by, in the twilight of our nearest surroundings; out of the corner of our eye we can always glimpse another world, without realizing it. We are walking all the time along a shore and along the edge of a virgin forest. Our gestures would seem to rise out of an entity that also encompasses these concealed spaces, and in an odd way they reveal their shadowy existence, although we are unaware of the roar of waves and shrieks of animals - the disquieting accompaniment to our words (and possibly their secret birthplace); we are unaware of the glittering jewels in the unknown world of nooks and crannies; usually we don't stray off the path even once in our lifetime. ~ Michel Ajvaz

The profound obscurity of the background of our ignorance is scarcely illuminated by a few glimmers of insight. ~ Sigmund Freud

I answered that as a neurologist and a psychiatrist, of course, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is not at all free from conditions. But I added that along with being a professor in two fields (neurology and psychiatry) I am a survivor of four camps (that is, concentration camps), and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is, and always remains, capable of resisting and braving even the worst conditions. To detach oneself from even the worst conditions is a uniquely human capability. [...] By virtue of this capacity man is capable of detaching himself not only from a situation but also from himself. He is capable of choosing his attitude toward himself. By doing so he really takes a stand toward his own somatic and psychic conditions and determinants. Understandably this is a crucial issue for psychotherapy and psychiatry, education and religion. For, seen in this light, a person is free to shape his own character, and man is responsible for what he may have made out of himself. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt, or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith. And yet I continue to live in a world the way a religious person lives in the world; I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted, and not left alone. I doubt; I am uncertain; I am restless, prone to wander. And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my gaze. ~ Lauren F. Winner

As a brand new graduate student starting in October 1956, my supervisor Michail Fischberg, a lecturer in the Department of Zoology at Oxford, suggested that I should try to make somatic cell nuclear transplantation work in the South African frog Xenopus laevis. ~ John Gurdon

It was a voice full of light and dark. Light not only as it glimmers, but also as it glares. Dark not only as it brings cold and fear, but also as it gives rest and shade. ~ Geraldine Brooks

Slowly, I began to relearn something I'd once grasped but had lost sight of: that emotion - that central element of fiction - derives not from information or from explanation, nor from a logical arrangement of the facts, but specifically from powerful images and from the qualities of language: diction, rhythm, form, structure, association, metaphor. And sometimes I also had glimmers of another thing I'd once known: how effectively information can be used to wall off emotion. ~ Andrea Barrett

Under each station of the real, another glimmers. ~ Marcel Proust

It had been a long time since I felt the fragrance of summer: the scent of the ocean, a distant train whistle, the touch of a girl's skin, the lemony perfume of her hair, the evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams.
But none of these were the way they once had been; they were all somehow off, as if copied with tracing paper that kept slipping out of place."
-from "Hear the Wind Sing ~ Haruki Murakami

Some say there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon But is that too far for you? Wouldn't you prefer your glimmers a little closer? Around the corner perhaps? Or even better on the kitchen table? Or in the fridge? Where you can see or hear or touch or smell them and take heart and take hope ~ Tom Skinner

The somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1994) provides neurobiological support for the notion that people make judgments not only by evaluating the consequences and their probability of occurring, but also and even sometimes primarily at a gut or emotional level ~ Oshin Vartanian

The ghosts of women once girls

Somewhere a little girl is reading aloud
in the middle of a dirt road. she smiles
at the sound of her own voice escaping
the spine of the book. she feeds her hunger
to know herself. She has not yet been taught
to dim, she sits with the stars beneath her feet,
a constellation of things to come.
as if a swallowed moon, she glimmers.
Her head wrap rolls out in a gutter, bare feet
scat the earth, the ghosts of women once girls
make bridge of the dust dancing behind her,
she decorates the ground in dimples
she stomps suffering out the spirit
hooves drumming the earth in circles
she holds gladness in her mouth
like a secret teased out of a giggle
joy like her sadness overflows
she is not the opinions of others
she is of visions and imagination
somewhere a little girl is reading aloud in the middle of a dirt road.
she smiles at the sound of her own voice escaping the spine of the book.
She is a room full
of listening, lending herself
to her own words
somewhere

a deep remembering of what was, she survives all. ~ Aja Monet

One clear-cut fact does, however, emerge: placebos, prescribed for a paranoid schizophrenic by his authority referent, had served to inhibit for approximately two or three months, not imaginary pains, but somatic ones. This finding is probably the most striking of all the findings reported herein for either Joseph or Leon. It demonstrates most dramatically the positive effects which can be achieved by suggestions originating with the paranoid schizophrenic's own delusional authority figures. This finding is all the more remarkable when one remembers that paranoid schizophrenics are typically negativistic, that, because they view other people with suspicion and mistrust, they resist suggestions that others make. But our data clearly suggest that paranoid schizophrenics are, like everyone else, quite capable of following positive suggestions when they originate with positive referents. In this respect, the major difference between normal people and paranoid schizophrenics lies not so much in the fact that the schizophrenics are less suggestible but in the fact that they have no positive authorities or referents in the real world; if they have any at all, these positive referents exist only in the world of their delusions. ~ Milton Rokeach

It has taken time and the blundering wisdom and anarchic greed of our ancestry to construct the modern city of consolidated institutions. It is a great historically amassed communal creation. If you fly above it at night, it is a jeweled wonder of the universe, floating like a giant liner on the sea of darkness. It is smart, accomplished, sophisticated, and breathtakingly beautiful. And it glimmers and sparkles as all things breakable glimmer and sparkle. You wonder how much God had to do with this, how much of the splendor and insolence of the modern city creatively built from the disparate intentions of generations of men comes of the inspiration of God. Because it is the city of the unremarked God, the sometime-thing God, the God of history. ~ E.L. Doctorow

You see? There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant - (sighs deeply). Oh, fuck it.

-M. Gustave, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) ~ Wes Anderson

Somaaesthetics can be provisionally defined a the critical meliorative study of one's experience and use of one's body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning. It is therefore also devoted to the knowledge, discourses, and disciplines that structure such somatic care or can improve it. ~ Richard Shusterman

Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return
to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair
chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time
regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent
and the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone
to show you how your longing waits alone.
What alchemy shines from under that shut door,
spinning out gold from the hollow of the heart?
("The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart") ~ Denise Levertov

Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. At the centre of their vision was a small hut, into which they could not see. The physical action presented to their attention was violent but mostly unseen. They inferred it, as they inferred inner movement, from words spoken by figures whose entrances and exits into and out of the visible space patterned the play. They saw its results when that facade opened to reveal a dead body. This genre, with its dialectics of seen and unseen, inside and outside, exit and entrance, was a simultaneously internal and external, intellectual and somatic expression of contemporary questions about the inward sources of harm, knowledge, power, and darkness. ~ Ruth Padel

The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the banners of the sunset are fluttering above our heads. The stench of yesterday's blood and slaughtered horses drips into the evening chill. ~ Isaac Babel

Further evidence for the pathogenic role of dissociation has come from a largescale clinical and community study of traumatized people conducted by a task force of the American Psychiatric Association. In this study, people who reported having dissociative symptoms were also quite likely to develop persistent somatic symptoms for which no physical cause could be found. They also frequently engaged in self-destructive attacks on their own bodies. The results of these investigations validate the century-old insight that traumatized people relive in their bodies the moments of terror that they can not describe in words. Dissociation appears to be the mechanism by which intense sensory and emotional experiences are disconnected from the social domain of language and memory, the internal mechanism by which terrorized people are silenced. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

Healing isn't just about pain. It's about learning to love yourself. As you move from feeling like a victim to being a proud survivor, you will have glimmers of hope, pride and satisfaction. Those are natural by-products of healing. ~ Ellen Bass

I am a child of the everlasting King.
I am forgiven.
I am a warrior.
I am cloaked in righteous armor.
I was made for adventure.
I was built for battle.
I am part of a larger story.
My true and lasting affirmation comes only from my King.
I am unique above all creation--planned and perfect in design.
I have been created for a glorious destiny.
All my ways are established by you, my King, and I walk in them.
My life and actions are real, authentic, and without compromise.
I am quickened and made alive through the power of your Spirit.
My whole life is before me.
I am a shining gift from God to this lost world.
I know my name, I understand my calling, and I am worthy to walk in it.
I am strong, brave, and courageous in the face of my enemies.
Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is true, dwell on these things.
My sins are scattered as far as the east is from the west.
I am a good husband to my wife.
I am a good father to my daughters.
The past is over, and the future glimmers with radiant light.
I will look to the new day, the dawning of hope.
I will step forward with the truth before me and will no longer look on the day that is gone.
The past is over; the future has begun. ~ James L. Rubart

The term "functional somatic syndrome" is used to describe groups of co-occurring symptoms that are medically unexplained. Polysymptomatic functional somatic syndromes frequently encountered by both mental health and primary care practitioners include irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and fibromyalgia. ~ Robert L. Woolfolk

When you become vulnerable, any ideal or perfect image of yourself falls away. (...)

Many people are addicted to perfection, and in their pursuit of the ideal, they have no patience with vulnerability. (...)

Every poet would like to write the ideal poem. Though they never achieve this, sometimes it glimmers through their best work. Ironically, the very beyondness of the idea is often the touch of presence that renders the work luminous. The beauty of the ideal awakens a passion and urgency that brings out the best in the person and calls forth the dream of excellence.

The beauty of the true ideal is its hospitality towards woundedness, weakness, failure and fall-back. Yet so many people are infected with the virus of perfection. They cannot rest; they allow themselves no ease until they come close to the cleansed domain of perfection. This false notion of perfection does damage and puts their lives under great strain. It is a wonderful day in a life when one is finally able to stand before the long, deep mirror of one's own reflection and view oneself with appreciation, acceptance, and forgiveness. On that day one breaks through the falsity of images and expectations which have blinded one's spirit. One can only learn to see who one is when one learns to view oneself with the most intimate and forgiving compassion. ~ John O'Donohue

One picks one's way about through the glass and aluminum doors, the receptionists' smiles, the lunches with too much alcohol, the openings with more, the mobs of people desperately trying to define good taste in such loud voices one can hardly hear oneself giggle, while the shebang is lit by flashes and flares through the paint-stained window, glimmers under the police-locked door, or, if one is taking a rare walk outside that day, by a light suffusing the whole sky, complex as the northern aurora. ~ Samuel R. Delany

Watching the very last glimmers of light sink into blackness behind the horizon. ~ Douglas Adams

Satan is the illusive manipulator. He prances and dances and drinks in the adulation of his worshippers as he glimmers and shimmers, displaying all that glitters and all that attracts the shallowness of man. ~ Billy Graham

I make grilled cheeses for lunch, one for me, two for Will. We don't have any chips, but I find a far of pickles in the pantry.
"This is the best thing I've ever eaten." He pauses for a drink, staring at me over the rim of his glass of juice.
"It's the provolone," I say, swallowing my last bite.
"It's the chef."
I smile and look away.
We listen to music. Talk. Kiss until my flesh glimmers gold-red. Warms to the touch from the deep scald at my core. He stops to watch. Leans his face close to my neck and smells my skin. Like I'm something he might taste. He sweeps his hands along my arms ... making me burn hotter.
"Is this what it's like for other fire-breathers?" he asks, winks, holding my hand up in his broad palm. "Or is it just me and my magic hands? ~ Sophie Jordan

The dream is not a somatic but a psychic phenomenon. You appreciate the significance ~ Sigmund Freud

We've all heard the stories. It's just that some people don't want to believe them. 'He shall rise from the green' doesn't have to mean coming from the Blood Forest or Ruthgar. It could mean he starts out drafting green. One of the first glimmers of Breaker's magical genius showed whyen he went green golem in the Battle of Garriston - he'd never even heard of going green golem. He intuited it on the spot. His will was so strong, he drafted a green that stopped musket balls, Teia. 'He shall kill gods and kings'? He already done both. 'He'll be an outsider'? How much more outsider can you be than a mixed-blood bastard from Tyrea? Each of those things offend the luxiats, and all of them together make their blood boil - as it makes them furious that a Lightbringer would be necessary to put their worship right - but hasn't Orholam's work always offended those in power? I won't put myself on the wrong side of Orholam. 'In the darkest hour, when the abominations come the sores of Big Jasper, when Hope himself has died, then shall he bring the holy light and banish darkness.' 'Hope himself,' Teia. That's Gavin Guile. He's dead. our darkest hour is coming. We have to pick a side. ~ Brent Weeks

And resting in the ocean, dipped into the sea, I find glimmers of One Taste everywhere. ~ Ken Wilber