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Cristina Nehring

Cristina Nehring

  • BOOKS
    • The Child Who Never Spoke
    • A Vindication of Love
    • 23-et-demi
    • Journey to the Edge of the Light
    • L’Amour à l’américaine
    • In Progress
  • SELECTED ARTICLES
    • Against the Current
    • On Love and Loss
    • On Parenting
    • On Mortality
    • On Literature
    • On French Culture
    • Travel Features
    • Compromising Memoirs
  • POETRY
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • The Sky Is Falling: Nature Shots
    • Child, Interrupted: Kid Shots
    • Not-So-Still-Life: Object Shots
    • Our Town: Urban Shots
    • Public Exhibits
    • Purely Personal
  • PRESENTATIONS
  • ERROR MESSAGES
  • TWO GIRLS IN PARIS (Blog)
  • ABOUT
    • Biography
    • Contact

Cristina Nehring

  • BOOKS
    • The Child Who Never Spoke
    • A Vindication of Love
    • 23-et-demi
    • Journey to the Edge of the Light
    • L’Amour à l’américaine
    • In Progress
  • SELECTED ARTICLES
    • Against the Current
    • On Love and Loss
    • On Parenting
    • On Mortality
    • On Literature
    • On French Culture
    • Travel Features
    • Compromising Memoirs
  • POETRY
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • The Sky Is Falling: Nature Shots
    • Child, Interrupted: Kid Shots
    • Not-So-Still-Life: Object Shots
    • Our Town: Urban Shots
    • Public Exhibits
    • Purely Personal
  • PRESENTATIONS
  • ERROR MESSAGES
  • TWO GIRLS IN PARIS (Blog)
  • ABOUT
    • Biography
    • Contact

Category: Error Messages

Error Messages

In my unrelenting effort to make enemies and alienate people, I am starting, today, a Running Thesaurus of Offensive Quotations. It’s been called “Error Messages” to suggest it does not fear contradiction or indeed, wrongness. Truths are paradoxes, and almost every point worth pursuing can be turned constructively on its head.

Still: I make no bones of the fact, dear reader, that I am a truth-hunter, a girl who needs and wants to identify larger axioms, general insights, be they damning or inspiring. (I prefer the inspiring ones, but the damning ones can clear a lot of brush too.) I’m a girl who is not loathe to say “should”—partly because I was brought up on Emerson and Samuel Jonson, both of whom talk like oracles a lot of the time–and I enjoy that. Partly because I was not brought up in boarding school and “should” is simply a way to say “hey!” to me: Hey, think about this for a sec.

I am always needing to take myself by the scruff of the neck like that. Fatigued most days by my five floor walk-up, beloved disabled toddler, debatable lifestyle habits and  impractical jobs, I need to yell to hear my own inner voice sometimes. So let’s yell. Or rather: talk clear, assume authority, and see where the chips fall. Like Whitman, we are all large, we all contradict ourselves,  we all “contain multitudes.

Posted on May 6, 2015August 12, 2023 by CristinaNehring
Posted in Error Messages

Upside-Down

When we are happy, we almost instantly ask ourselves if we shouldn’t be worried about something, but when miserable, we rarely recall what might merit our joy. It’s a bias in our nature that would be better reversed.

Posted on May 18, 2014August 12, 2023 by CristinaNehring
Posted in Error Messages

Amnesia

Most crises are never resolved; they are simply forgotten.

Posted on May 8, 2014August 12, 2023 by CristinaNehring
Posted in Error Messages

Clockwork

Sex should be the overflow of an internal reality that has become too powerful to contain, not an exercise as regular as eating healthy cereal in the morning or doing cardiovascular exercise after work. It should be transgressive and therefore somewhat irregular. When it grows regular as clockwork or diet, it becomes emotionally suspect and slightly absurd.

Posted on May 7, 2014August 12, 2023 by CristinaNehring
Posted in Error Messages

Chairs

It does not make you a better person to have died. Existence is an endless game of musical chairs. One day everyone sits down between the chairs: saint and sinner, you and me. A mean and petty person who dies is still a mean and petty person. Death is democratic, not merit-based–and not sanctifying.

Posted on May 7, 2014August 12, 2023 by CristinaNehring
Posted in Error Messages

Wisdom

One must never be afraid to give away one’s trade secrets. Hearing them only helps those who are already practicing them anyway. If we used a thousandth of the good advice we owned and believed in, we’d all be superstars.

Posted on May 6, 2014August 12, 2023 by CristinaNehring
Posted in Error Messages
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