self help reading + music

from “Mama” (Trash), Dorothy Allison

Watching my mama I learned some lessons too well. Never show that you care, Mama taught me, and never want something you cannot have. Never give anyone the satisfaction of denying you something you need, and for that, what you have to do is learn to need nothing. Starve the wanting part of you. In time I understood my mama to be a kind of Zen Baptist—rooting desire out of her own heart as ruthlessly as any mountaintop ascetic. The lessons Mama taught me, like the lessons of Buddha, were not a matter of degree but of despair. My mama’s philosophy was better and thin. She didn’t give a damn if she was born again, she just didn’t want to be born again poor and wanting.

(throw the kitten in a bag with a rock, plug your ears to her soggy mewling)

death cab for cutie – sick of myself (but Edie Falco rocks my world)