Coming up for air (1939) - George Orwell

Practically everything worth doing was forbidden, in theory anyway. According to Mother, everything that a boy ever wants to do was ‘dangerous’. Swimming was dangerous, climbing trees was dangerous, and so were sliding, snowballing, hanging on behind carts, using catapults and squailers, and even fishing. All animals were dangerous, except Nailer, the two cats, and Jackie the bullfinch. Every animal had its special recognized methods of attacking you. Horses bit, bats got into your hair, earwigs got into your ears, swans broke your leg with a blow of their wings, bulls tossed you, and snakes ‘stung’. All snakes stung, according to Mother, and when I quoted the penny encyclopedia to the effect that they didn’t sting but bit, she only told me not to answer back. Lizards, slow-worms, toads, frogs, and newts also stung. All insects stung, except flies and blackbeetles. Practically all kinds of food, except the food you had at meals, were either poisonous or ‘bad for you’. Raw potatoes were deadly poison, and so were mushrooms unless you bought them at the greengrocer’s. Raw gooseberries gave you colic and raw raspberries gave you a skin-rash. If you had a bath after a meal you died of cramp, if you cut yourself between the thumb and forefinger you got lockjaw, and if you washed your hands in the water eggs were boiled in you got warts. Nearly everything in the shop was poisonous, which was why Mother had put the gate in the doorway. Cowcake was poisonous, and so was chicken corn, and so were mustard seed and Karswood poultry spice. Sweets were bad for you and eating between meals was bad for you, though curiously enough there were certain kinds of eating between meals that Mother always allowed. When she was making plum jam she used to let us eat the syrupy stuff that was skimmed off the top, and we used to gorge ourselves with it till we were sick.
(pp. 52-53)


If I tot up the account, I suppose I must admit that the war did me good as well as harm. At any rate that year of reading novels was the only real education, in the sense of book-learning, that I’ve ever had. It did certain things to my mind. It gave me an attitude, a kind of questioning attitude, which I probably wouldn’t have had if I’d gone through life in a normal sensible way. But—I wonder if you can understand this—the thing that really changed me, really made an impression on me, wasn’t so much the books I read as the rotten meaninglessness of the life I was leading.
(p.126)


It struck me that perhaps a lot of the people you see walking about are dead. We say that a man’s dead when his heart stops and not before. It seems a bit arbitrary. After all, parts of your body don’t stop working—hair goes on growing for years, for instance. Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea. Old Porteous is like that. Wonderfully learned, wonderfully good taste—but he’s not capable of change. Just says the same things and thinks the same thoughts over and over again. There are a lot of people like that. Dead minds, stopped inside. Just keep moving backwards and forwards on the same little track, getting fainter all the time, like ghosts.
(p.168)

Books v. cigarettes (1946) - George Orwell

I have also listed at their full price the books that have been given to me, and those that I have temporarily borrowed, or borrowed and kept. This is because book-giving, book-borrowing and book-stealing more or less even out.
(p.2)



Many of the people who came tu us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who "wants a book for an invalid" (a very common demand, that) and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover.
(p.8)



At present we know only that the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity. Any writer or journalist who denies that fact - and nearly all the current praise of the Soviet Union contains or implies such a denial - is, in effect, demanding his own destruction.
(p.41)



I did not question the prevailing standards, because so far as I could see there were no others. How could the rich, the strong, the elegant, the fashionable, the powerful, be in the wrong ? It was their world, and the rules they made for it must be the right ones. And yet from a very early age I was aware of the impossibility of any subjective conformity. Always at the centre of my heart the inner self seemed to be awake, pointing out the difference between the moral obligation and the pyschological fact. It was the same in all matters, wordly or otherwordly.
(p.111)



At that time I could not see beyond the moral dilemma that is presented to the weak in a world governed by the strong : Break the rules, or perish. I did not see that in that case the weak have the right to make a different set of rules for themselves; because, even if such an idea had occurred to me, there was no one in my environment who could have confirmed me in it.
(p.115)



For years I had been resolved - unconsciously at first, but consciously later on - that when once my scholarship was won I would "slack off" and cram no longer.  This resolve, by the way, was so fully carried out that between the ages of thirteen and twenty-two or three I hardly ever did a stroke of available work.
(p.116)



"Good-bye," Flip's parting smile seemed to say; "it's not worth quarelling now. You haven't made much of a success on your time at St Cyprian's, have you ? And I don't suppose you'll get on awfully well at public school either. We made a mistake, really, in wasting our time and money on you. This kind of education hasn't much to offer to a boy with your background and your outlook. Oh don't think we don't understand you ! We know all about those ideas you have at the back of your head, we know you disbelieve in everything we've taught you, and we know you aren't in the least grateful for all we've done for you. But there's no use in bringing it all up now. We arent' responsible for you any longer, and we shan't be seeing you again . Let's just admit that you're one of our failures and part without ill-feeling. And so, good-bye".
That at least was what I read into her face.
(p.117)

The Stupid Things We Hold On To - Ryan O'Connell

When you live in New York, everything starts to have sentimental value.
If you’re here long enough you won’t be able to walk down certain blocks because of reasons x, y, and z. You collect memories like a hoarder. Everything means something. Everything has the potential to be monumental because that’s what we were taught before we moved here. The mundane can become magic. Just like that.

The other day I was walking down First Avenue and I stopped in front of this restaurant called Tara Thai. I stopped because I was struck by this memory of myself three years ago ordering take out from there. I was 22 then and it was a hot day in the summer. One of those days where the weather sticks to your body like glue. You complain about the humidity to anyone who will listen because it’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s how you keep the days moving and into colder weather. I was wearing shorts that day and I remember feeling very aware of my body. Sweat was seeping into every crevice and I had started to resemble a melted piece of candle wax. I actually liked it though. I told everyone that I hated it, loathed the heat, couldn’t wait till fall, but a part of me secretly liked the feeling of being so naked and young and disgusting on the sidewalk.

Before I had gotten the takeout at Tara Thai, I had been watching the Tyra Banks Show with two of my friends, eating peaches and smoking pot in my studio apartment. I smoked sometimes back then because I felt obligated to. Not from my friends or from “the media” or whatever. I just felt like it was important to do things without knowing the reason why I did them. I never even liked the feeling that pot gave me but life didn’t mean as much to me then as it does now. I could delete entire days, resign myself to a horrible altered state, because it was just a day. A day just like all the others. Who cares if I waste another? I don’t feel this way anymore. In some ways, that’s good. I’m placing value in time. But a part of me still wishes I could still be that person who smoked pot for no reason on a Saturday afternoon.

I had stopped by Tara Thai to get food and bring it to my friend’s apartment. She was my best friend actually. Still is. At the time she was living in a crappy apartment on 13th and B. The one redeeming aspect of her place was that it had a courtyard, which we would spend all of our time in. Drinking so much wine, talking for hours because it was free and none of us had any money. This was three years ago. Today my best friend has a full-time job and a boyfriend who she lives with in Park Slope. She’s so happy. She wasn’t happy the summer she lived in the apartment on 13th and B. She was dating some emotionally distant boy and drinking too much. (To be fair, we all were.) Killing time till she went back to school. Killing time. Ha. Now we do anything to keep time alive. We keep it breathing. We feed it water. We would never think to kill it. Wouldn’t dare to.

Even though my best friend is happy now, part of me wishes that we could still spend those lazy days together. They’re gone before you know it. They get taken away from you when you’re sleeping, like all things you take for granted do. Today you can be lazy. You can drink wine in a courtyard and talk for hours but it feels different. Not as pure, not as good. You’re hungover the second you open your mouth and drink. Why does it feel this way? I’m still so young but nothing feels like it once did. Nothing. I didn’t know it would happen this quickly. I thought I had some time to prepare myself.
I stopped in front of Tara Thai the other day because I was reminded of how fast it can all change.
Getting take-out whilst stoned on a summer day may seem like a useless memory. It may seem so unremarkable but it wasn’t. Not to me. The restaurant is here. I’m still here. But the mood and circumstances of that day are gone forever. Wave good-bye to Tara Thai and move on. Please just move the hell on. I don’t want to have to be the one who mourns everything when everyone else has clearly forgotten. Being the ghost of some crappy thai restaurant in the East Village while everyone else is in South Brooklyn soaking lentils with their boyfriend. It’s mortifying. It’s mortifying to be the one who remembers.