Marianne Williamson

Say what you will about Marianne in all her affairs, but this book is quite brave. It’s a brave book. You don’t get any gold stars from the snobs for reading Marianne, you know…. Oh, how many times have I thought about reading one of those books—you know, One of Those Books; I’ve read quite a few—that I decided not to read after the positive reviews were all satisfied that Joey Fantastic was a standard-issue hero, you know; (and that’s the Miracle of Joey Ramone lol), and it’s like—yeah, new agers do it too, it irritates me if I let it; everyone does it out of habit: it started with the Ancient Greeks, or rather, it started an indeterminate but probably long length of time after there were no more Ancient Greeks (not in books) that one could meet and tell one, you know, Oh yes, Joey Fantastic. Kind of an alcoholic, but he was a miracle-worker with those dice…. I was impressed once that Malcolm X read the dictionary once to learn Anglo-English, and I started to study the dictionary myself, as a sort of encyclopedia, but in the end, the encyclopedia isn’t quite as true as Hans Christian Andersen. It would be enormously diverting as a curiosity thing, as an experiment, if you will, if the people who wrote them weren’t still so Anglo-wowed and clueless about life, but, there you go. Being alive is not nearly as important as being a white man, in our education.

I don’t know. I don’t know much about love yet, but it’s certainly a brave thing to talk about. To be so un-wowed by the conventions of the religious and secular communities, to be so much truer without being theatrically indignant the way that the people who are /wrong/ about things are, you know. I mean, I don’t know if Marianne is a saint or a siddhi or if she has the energy-power to heal people by smiling enigmatically. But she’s brave enough to talk about love, which in my book, is brave enough.

…. I realize now that fear of any-body, or any-thing, is not called for, you know, (Mr Mustache: I’ll call my movie, The Triumph of Fear! It’ll be about my life!), but I will say that I think, well, I’m not afraid of the man who wants to blow up buildings and shoot people in the gut, right. I’m afraid of the man who reads a book, with half a sneer on his face…. (For without the one, you can’t have the other.)

And, you know, that person has been me. I’ve been the villain. Or at least, I’ve been the villain’s cat. 😸

🐝… (more)