It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality

The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.

http://www.azquotes.com/author/32483-Wilfred_Bion

It is too often forgotten that the gift of speech, so centrally employed, has been elaborated as much for the purpose of concealing thought by dissimulation and lying as for the purpose of elucidating and communicating thought.

The shock of glossy holly leaves alight
Rivals the enrapturement by art
Like Magdalen does when floodlit in the dark
Such beauty  has  its power and its might

Lack of expectation opens eyes
Too used to seeing what is always seen
So into  open channels flow light’s streams
Shaking our assumptions and our lies.

Life can be restricted but intense;
Abandoning all hope is one way out.
While being circumspect with mistress doubt
We  may find  uncommon  self by sense

Looking out I see the entire world
While in a shell a tiny snail is curled

• Photo by author
• “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.” – Jack Kornfield
• 

“Contrary to the conventional wisdom, refusing to forgive or have further contact with an unrepentant, abusive relative is therapeutic.” Unknown

The Warsaw Ghetto 1940

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/10/polands-jews-fear-future-under-new-holocaust-law-nazi-atrocities

Extract

One lesser-known memorial is a small plaque on the wall of the Warszawa Gdańska railway station, a nondescript socialist-era building on the north side of the city. It was from here that many Poles of Jewish origin departed in the wake of the “anti-Zionist campaign” in March 1968, when cold war politics and a power struggle within the Polish Communist party led to an antisemitic propaganda campaign forcing thousands of Polish Jews to leave the country.

“Loyalty to socialist Poland and imperialist Israel is not possible simultaneously,” prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz had declared in 1968. “Whoever wants to face these consequences in the form of emigration will not encounter any obstacle.” The plaque bears a tribute from the Polish-Jewish writer Henryk Grynberg: “For those who emigrated from Poland after March 1968 with a one-way ticket. They left behind more than they had possessed.”