Salutation

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.

[principleofplenitude]

And above all, my body as well as my soul, beware of assuming the sterile attitude of a spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of miseries is not a proscenium, a man screaming is not a dancing bear. —Aimé Césaire, from  from Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

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Wixted and Mickes proposed a new measure called confidence-accuracy characteristic (CAC) analysis. CAC analysis6 aimed to answer the question that Wixted felt previous work had overlooked. And, they argued, this was what should really matter to jurors in court: if a witness identifies a suspect with a given level of confidence, how likely is that identification to be accurate? Using CAC analysis, data from previous lab studies now showed that highly confident witnesses were up to 97% accurate7. This was a seismic and controversial finding, says Thomas Albright, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Wixted “came into the field and turned it topsy-turvy”, he says. Accordingly, “there was a tremendous amount of pushback”, says Andrew Smith, a memory researcher at Iowa State University. Wixted says that critics were evenly split between the argument that eyewitness memory could never be reliable and others who said that the relationship between confidence and accuracy was already common knowledge. Real-world data supported Wixted’s arguments, too. He had collaborated with the Houston Police Department in Texas on a study examining nearly 350 photo line-ups8. The department had adopted procedures that created fair line-ups, such as double-blinding — making sure that the person administering the process didn’t know who the suspect was. Wixted also asked the Houston officers to record their eyewitnesses’ confidence immediately after the identification process. The study suggested that high-confidence identifications were roughly 97% correct, whereas low-confidence identifications were just a little better than a coin flip. Further support of the theory, says Wixted, is seen in an analysis of data from the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization in New York City that aims to clear the names of people who have been wrongly convicted. In 92 of the first 250 cases in which DNA evidence overturned a conviction9, trial testimony had a record of what the eyewitness said when their memory was first tested. In every case, the eyewitness was less confident during the first test than they were in court. In 2017, Wixted and Wells, who had in the past disagreed publicly about eyewitness memory, co-authored a paper10. It argued that confidence could be indicative of accuracy during the first test of a witness’s memory in a police line-up — but only under “pristine” testing conditions. These include steps such as double-blinding and careful line-up presentation to avoid drawing attention to the suspect. The paper had a huge impact, says Margaret Bull Kovera, a psychologist at the City University of New York in New York City. A survey last year of psychologists who have studied eyewitnesses reveals the turnaround: 89% agreed that, in pristine conditions, an eyewitness’s confidence is informative about accuracy11.

—"Memory on trial: the new science of when to trust eyewitness testimony" from Nature

[principleofplenitude]

Being set on the idea Of getting to Atlantis, You have discovered of course Only the Ship of Fools is Making the voyage this year, As gales of abnormal force Are predicted, and that you Must therefore be ready to Behave absurdly enough To pass for one of The Boys, At least appearing to love Hard liquor, horseplay and noise. Should storms, as may well happen, Drive you to anchor a week In some old harbour-city Of Ionia, then speak With her witty scholars, men Who have proved there cannot be Such a place as Atlantis: Learn their logic, but notice How its subtlety betrays Their enormous simple grief; Thus they shall teach you the ways To doubt that you may believe. If, later, you run aground Among the headlands of Thrace, Where with torches all night long A naked barbaric race Leaps frenziedly to the sound Of conch and dissonant gong: On that stony savage shore Strip off your clothes and dance, for Unless you are capable Of forgetting completely About Atlantis, you will Never finish your journey. Again, should you come to gay Carthage or Corinth, take part In their endless gaiety; And if in some bar a  tart, As she strokes your hair, should say “This is Atlantis, dearie,” Listen with attentiveness To her life-story: unless You become acquainted now With each refuge that tries to Counterfeit Atlantis, how Will you recognise the true? Assuming you beach at last Near Atlantis, and begin That terrible trek inland Through squalid woods and frozen Thundras where all are soon lost; If, forsaken then, you stand, Dismissal everywhere, Stone and now, silence and air, O remember the great dead And honour the fate you are, Travelling and tormented, Dialectic and bizarre. Stagger onward rejoicing; And even then if, perhaps Having actually got To the last col, you collapse With all Atlantis shining Below you yet you cannot Descend, you should still be proud Even to have been allowed Just to peep at Atlantis In a poetic vision: Give thanks and lie down in peace, Having seen your salvation. All the little  household gods Have started crying, but say Good-bye now, and put to sea. Farewell, my dear, farewell: may Hermes, master of the roads, And the four dwarf Kabiri, Protect and serve you always; And may the Ancient of Days Provide for all you must do His invisible guidance, Lifting up, dear, upon you The light of His countenance.

—W.H. Auden, "Atlantis"

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"Because he aspired to see too far ahead, he looks behind and treads a backward path." —Dante, from The Inferno

[principleofplenitude]

Louise Bogan stopped writing poems, or nearly. It was partly, I feel sure, that the detachment demanded of the critic (and especially his absorption in analyzing the work of others) is diametrically opposed to the kind of detachment demanded of the poet in relation to his own work. We are permitted to become detached only after the shock of an experience has been taken in, allowed to "happen" in the depest sense. Detachment comes with examining the experience by means of writing the poem.

—May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

[principleofplenitude]

I have said elsewhere that we have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can—if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough—be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being, what the hazards are of a fairly usual, everyday kind. We go up to Heaven and down to Hell a dozen times a day—at least, I do. And the discipine of work provides an exercise bar, so that the wild, irrational motions of the soul become formal and creative. It literally keeps one from falling on one's face. [...] [on another day] I see my own function as quietly destroying myths, even those of my own making, in order to come closer and closer to reality and to accepting reality.

—May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

[principleofplenitude]

How unnatural the imposed view, imposed by a puriatnical ethos, that passionate love belongs only to the young, that people are dead from the neck down by the time they are forty, and that any deep feeling, any passion after that age, is either ludicrous or revolting! The French have always known that our capacity for loving mellows and ripens, and love if it is any good at all gets better with age. Perhaps it is not the puritan in us who has spread this myth. Perhaps it is the opposite; the revolt against puritanism has opened up a new ethos where sex is the god, and thus the sexual athlete is the true hero. Here the middle-aged or old are at a disadvantage. Where we have the advantage is in loving itself—we know so much more; we are so much better able to handle anxiety, frustration, or even our own romanticism; and deep down we have such a store of tenderness.

—May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

[principleofplenitude]

In the mail a letter from a twelve-year-old child, enclosing poems, her mother having pused her to ask my opinion. This child does really look at things, and I can write something helpful, I think. But it is troubling how may people expect applause, recognition, when they have not even begun to learn an art or a craft. Instant success is the order of the day; "I want it now!" I wonder whether this is not part of our corurption by machiens. Machines do things very quickly and outside the natural rhythm of life, and we are indignant if a car doesn't start at the first try.

—May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

[principleofplenitude]

My own belief is that as regards oneself, if one is a serious writer, as an instrument for experiencing. life—all of it—flows through this instrument and is distilled through it into works of art. How one lives as a private person is intimately bound into the work. And at some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept tourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilty, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capcity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked. —May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

[principleofplenitude]

It is only when we believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can believe it—and I do and always have—then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it. I have become convinced since that horrible review (unimportant in itself) that it is a message, however deviously presented, to tell me that I have been overconcerned wtih the materialistic aspects of bringing out this novel, the dangerous hope that it become a best seller, or that, for once, I might get a leg up from the critics, the establishment, and not have once more to see the work itself stand alone and make its way, heart by heart, as it is discovered by a few people with all the excitement of a person who finds a wildflower in the woods that he has discovered on his own. From my isolation to the isolation of someone somewhere who will find my work there exists a true communion. I have not lacked it in these last years, and it is a blessing. It is free of "ambition" and it "makes the world go away," as the popular song says. This is what I can hope for and I must hope for nothing more or less." —May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude (1973)

[principleofplenitude]

It seems that two qualities are necessary if a great artist is to remain creative to the end of a long life; he must on the one hand retain an abnormally keen awareness of life, he must never grow complacent, never be content with life, must always demand the impossible and when he cannot have it, must despair. The burden of the mystery must be with him day and night. [The artist] must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy. Many lesser poets have it only in their youth; some even of the greatest lose it in middle life. Wordsworth lost the courage to despair and with it his poetic power. But more often the dynamic tensions are so powerful that they destroy the man before he reaches maturity. —Humphrey Trevelyan, on Goethe, quoted in May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude

[principleofplenitude]

Even a few months ago, I felt like I had to finish this book—to have it done by the end of this year; imagining this book was the single thing I had to do before having a baby. But last night I imagined not racing to finish this book; not giving myself only two more months with it, but ten months, or a year, or two years, or tne. And this felt a million times more nurturing than rushing to finish it in time to have a baby; a million times more loving and true. —Sheila Heti, from Motherhood (2018)

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I should have known all along that this would happen. All the times I contemplated children, I felt a giddiness and wobbliness that are nothing like the commitments I've made that come from a deeper, more solid place. Those commitments feel dark, unfantastical, mixed up equally with the good and the bad. But the thought of having children always made me feel dizzy, or as elated as sucking helium, like all the things I've rushed into, and just as impulsively, left. —Sheila Heti, from Motherhood (2018)

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Right before my mother left the room, she spoke, with some confusion, about women who say that raising kids is the most important thing in their life. I asked her if motherhood had been the most important part of her life, and she blushed and said, No—at the very same moment that I interrupted her and said, You don't have to answer. I was there. —Sheila Heti, from Motherhood (2018)

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It's fair to say I'm missing out on something—but also that I might prefer to miss out. [...] I don't have to live every possible life, or to experience that particular love. I know I cannot hide from life; that life will give me experiences no matter what I choose. Not having a child is no escape from life, for life will always put me in situations, and show me new things, and take me to darknesses I wouldn't choose to see, and all sorts of treasures of knowledge I cannot comprehend. —Sheila Heti, from Motherhood (2018)

[principleofplenitude]

A measure of impatience, a bad feeling on the walk, too many sunflowers lining the edge of the lawn, not enough sun for everyone, the distribution of love wholly unequal, the sense that one is being depended on, the sense that one is failing. The feeling that there is little in life left to strive for; something having been accomplished, not much left to do. A feeling of uselesssnes, of the end of the world coming, of other people's lives having no purpose, of all of us doing whatever we feel like, no collective direction in which we're all taking part. And another dark shadow on a dark lawn: the fact that for a woman of curiosity, no decision will ever feel like the right one. In both, too much is missing. What can I say, except: I forgive myself for every time I neglected to take a risk, for all the narrowings and winnowings of my life. I understand that fear beckons to a person as much as possibility does, and even more strongly. —Sheila Heti, from Motherhood (2018)

[principleofplenitude]

Always, having accepted that I want everything to change, I suddenly realize I do not. I want the dream of leaving, not leaving itself. The dream of other lives, not any other life. The trick is not to trick myself with too much dreaming, but to let my dreaming take me to the uttermost edges of desire and longing, without advancing too far—for my fantasies to only stretch so far, before snapping me back into my life. —Sheila Heti, from Motherhood (2018)