Heavy: An American Memoir [Book]
Book Overview: In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.
“Love is by far the most important thing of all. It casts out fear. It is the fulfilling of the law. It covers a multitude of sins. Love is absolutely invincible. There is no difficulty that enough love will not cure; no disease that enough love will not heal; no door that enough love will not open; no gulf that enough love will not bridge; no wall that enough love will not throw down; no sin that enough love will not redeem. It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake; a sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.”
Emmet Fox, via No Excuses! (Page 256)
“We are often drawn to chaotic romantic partners because their chaos guarantees that we will always feel needed. In contrast, dating someone with their shit together is, in some ways, terrifying—they are so functional and self-sufficient and self-contained, how could we ever know that they need us? The answer is: they don’t need us. Yet they choose to spend their life with us anyway. And that is far more powerful.”
Mark Manson
“That was the enchantment that had happened to him in his sleep and through the om: he now loved everything and everyone, he was full of cheerful love for anything he saw. And it seemed to him now that he had been so ill earlier because he had been able to love nothing and no one.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 83)
“She thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of having misused or been misused. He spent wonderful hours with the clever and beautiful artist, became her pupil, her lover, her friend.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (Page 60)
“To be loved and to love is almost spiritual breathing. The body cannot live without breath, and the spirit cannot live without love.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 236)
“In the struggle against injustice, it’s easy to let bitterness and hatred harden your heart. As Marcus Aurelius wrote: ‘What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.’ When we close ourselves off to love and hope, we naturally experience less love and hope. The Bible reminds us that ‘whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble.’ And James Baldwin, that ‘hatred…has never failed to destroy the men who hated.’ Hatred corrodes. It takes you south, backward, down, down to depths. Love, on the other hand, protects, trusts, hopes, preserves. Love does not fail. It takes you north, it leads you forward. It always wins. Which way are you going? Is your heart growing or shrinking? Is your love and compassion and connection for other people, your hope for a better future, growing or shrinking?”
Ryan Holiday
“To me, smoking might be the most attractive activity a woman (or anyone for that matter) can do. Yet, the irony in this attraction is that if I were to fall in love with a woman who smoked, I’d want them to stop the disgusting habit immediately. Perhaps there is a metaphor in there for love. Where people fuck up tragically in love is that they fall in love with someone and then immediately attempt to make them someone else.”
Cole Schafer
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 13)
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same oaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.”
“Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 10)
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstacy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”
“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 9)
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.”