"If only I knew how to disappear, there would be a perfect union of love between God and the earth I tread, the sea I hear...When I am in any place, I disturb the silence of heaven and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart."
On this day in Pair, France, 1909, Simone Weil was born.
It is only appropriate that 111 years later, as her biggest fan, I would have a headache that bordered on a migraine all day. Also in celebration of her memory I didn't have a second cookie at lunch though I could have. I still, however, had a first cookie.
For a short article, here's this Brain Pickings article. For a piece of Weil art that has a cool-girl aloofness to it that Weil would certainly never have possessed, have this.
Simone Weil refused to join the Catholic Church. This was before Vatican II.
I have not the strength of Weil to write on when I really don't have to with a pain like this behind my eyes. I cannot, in a few words on a blog, describe to you what reading Gravity and Grace, a short collection of her scattered thoughts, for the first time was like for me. But if you can recall for yourself what it feels like to find a word for a feeling that you had always felt but never known what to call - it was something like that.
If I could bring back any person from French history, I would call back Simone Weil. If all she did was insult me in French that I could hardly understand, then I would be a happy person.
Here's a rad quote on her idea of the self and how any concept of it needs to be destroyed:
"We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say "I". That is what we have to give to God, in other words, to destroy. There is absolutely no other free act which it is given us to accomplish, only the destruction of the "I.""
