This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I share it here because something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my life… what happened was that I started to pray.
Children | Friend | Marriage | Unhappiness |
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, brief as the lightning in the collied night, that, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, and ere a man hath power to say, — Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up: so quick bright things come to confusion.
I always thought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust—thin and crispy, or thick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise.
Absence | Children | Desire | Enough | People | Reason | Regret | Thinking | Witness | Think |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Life, struck sharp on death, makes awful lightning. His last word was, 'Love–' 'Love, my child, love, love!'–(then he had done with grief) 'Love, my child.' Ere I answered he was gone, and none was left to love in all the world.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Children use the fist until they are of the age to use the brain.
Joy |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Dreams of doing good for good-for-nothing people.
The Silly Putty-like malleability of the institution [marriage], in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Very few people... would accept marriage on it's thirteenth-century terms. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves. (Though I suppose this would not be a very persuasive argument to those who probably also don't believe in evolution).
This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.
Ceremony | Culture | Feelings | Joy | Need | Order | Safe | Tradition |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sleep on, Baby, on the floor, tired of all the playing, sleep with smile the sweeter for that you dropped away in! On your curls' full roundness stand golden lights serenely-- one cheek, pushed out by the hand, folds the dimple inly.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And we talk'd--oh, how we talk'd! her voice so cadenc'd in the talking, made another singing--of the soul! a music without bars-- while the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were walking, brought interposition worthy--sweet,--as skies about the stars, and she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place and touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run soon in long rivers down the lifted face, and leave the vision clear for stars and sun.
This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.
Depression | Joy | Loneliness | Need |
We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce, mind you. And we invented infidelity, too, as well as romantic misery. In fact we invented the whole sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy.