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Oh, it‘s mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. It‘s one of those nights when I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can‘t see.
The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn‘t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.
I‘m muddleheaded, I thought, because I could go on thinking but would not reach any clarity: Which, between hope and fear, had made life unlivable for him? I‘ve never called life unlivable, he said. I‘ve never lived a single day without something that matters to me, something that I live for.
“You need to listen to me,” Dr. Fitzgerald says. “I‘m trying to help you.” For the duration of an instant, Bunny goes blind. Everything is black, tar-black and deep purple, which is then followed by a ring of light, a crisp and sharply edged light framed by fire, and the glow bores through the darkness. This is how Bunny sees rage. Slow and measured, she says, “No, you need to listen to me.”
To try to read the look on Bunny‘s face is like trying to figure out what a napkin is thinking.
And I don‘t find a way to tell Melvin what I want to say. To say I am trying to unmake this, all of it. To say I‘m paddling backward against the waves.
We didn‘t ask for help understanding the things that confounded us, like sanity and insanity. So our own lives became unreal, even as they overwhelmed us.
When a man said to me, “I don‘t know what you‘re talking about,” and I realized that nobody says that unless they know exactly what you‘re talking about.
I‘ve been looking to read a book about restorative justice for a long time & I‘m excited to get started on this one.
pickIf you asked me for a list of everything I'm looking for in a work of nonfiction, I would...not be able to answer you, nor would I be at all interested in the question, but Impossible Owls ticked every single one of those boxes I can't be bothered to even think up. I really loved this one.
Is all this a matter of life and death? I‘ll say no for the moment and come back to the question later. At that point, I‘ll say: not directly, but in a way yes. It‘s a matter of how far death is allowed into our lives. Or the fatal, that which kills us. To be precise: compared with that which kills us, death is nothing but an innocent waif. Or: death, compared to that which kills us, is a gentleman with good manners and a shy look in his eye.
To understand the electronics industry is simple: every time someone says “robot,” simply picture a woman of color. Instead of self-aware robots, workers—all women, mostly immigrants, some undocumented—hunched over tables with magnifying glasses assembling parts, sometimes on a factory line and sometimes on a kitchen table.
I still remembered then, I think, most of what it had been like to live on the river, and the knowledge of this was strung inside me and along my arms like blinking eyes.
They say an unhappy man wants distractions—something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he‘d rather lie there shivering than get up and find one.
Here‘s Jack Stilgoe‘s take on the necessary compromise [of driverless cars]: “Things that look like autonomous systems are actually systems in which the world is constrained to make them look autonomous.”
I know that I rarely call the people I love by their names. I call them, if it is okay with them, by the name I have given them. I wonder if this means I think of my beloveds as my children. That seems very patronizing. Especially because I mostly don‘t give them money. But, on the other hand, how lovely all my mothers. All my babies.
I really recommend 270° by Maggie Umber. Just a short book about owls with gorgeous and varied illustrations. It‘s beautiful. It‘s a nice reprieve.
Part of what you have to figure out in this life is, Who would I be if I hadn‘t been frightened? What hurt me, and what would I be if it hadn‘t?
There is nothing more sacred in our culture than precisely this idea: that a woman‘s body belongs more easily to any man than it does to herself; that every man is allowed to be not only a full and complete human being, but also, whenever he wants, a total beast.
In truth I am already a zombie. My skin is crawling with discomfort, as though some werewolf form lurking within wants to split it open and burst free. My head lolls with the effort of keeping myself upright. My eyes are glassed over. I am out of sorts with myself. My lack of intent turns me into an alien blob, a sack of seething pulp. I am hungry for whatever it is that makes us human.
I don‘t know how to make things work, so I‘ve focused my energy on words; I don‘t have a practical bone in my body, so I‘ve become contemplative instead. Sometimes I just look at my shirts and their fine colors, admiring them instead of reaching for them.
You might get the part. You might not. There will always be a gap between the life you have and the one you want. You‘ll get a few but there will be so many that you won‘t get. It doesn‘t really matter. That‘s what no one tells you. It doesn‘t matter at all.
What do I long for? I ask myself this question in the witching hours because it cannot be asked by day. On certain turbulent nights this longing is so great and deep and bald it swallows up the whole world. Defying comprehension, it just is. And I am a black hole, void of substance, greedy with yearning. To be without sleep is to want and be found wanting.
Made a note to myself: there‘s the reality that the others keep an eye on, and next to it is my own.
The way the pen used to feel, / a weapon, drawing blood from the page; not a hymn, / not an homage– / why are the best songs love songs I want to draw / death but death doesn‘t make music. On the page or / elsewhere.
Although I have sworn never to sin against blessed concision, I am still in complicity with words, and if I am seduced by silence I dare not enter it, I merely prowl on its peripheries.
