April 2011
34 posts
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“It’s really important for me to read a woman who conflates sex with...”
– Hannah Jo May
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Transit
You should pick the books you read on the subway carefully. Do not avoid books that may cause you to cry out in public. Subways are great places to sob and laugh. It is more a question of what kind of company you want to keep. I recommend Inferno for the subway and the Harvard Review for your bedroom. Always keep books for your room.
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I remember her complimenting me on my most recent writing and I remember you being within earshot and I remember catching your eyes for the shortest second and I remember being glad.
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“Happiness is a decision made daily, a sensation maintained by means of a series...”
– Elizabeth Gumport
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“I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to...”
– Zelda Fitzgerald
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Also,
is my favorite non-sequitur-eliminator because what does not follow after also?
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“…she wants to incubate herself - to build up her own immune system so that...”
– Tilda Swinton
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As I searched for my own words, so much of what I had to say seemed redundant. So much of it mimicked one of the many long lists I’ve made, one of the many futures I’ve built carefully in rows and columns, but this time simple, reassuring breaths were not following. These sentences were not convincing me of the possibility, they were only reminding me of how many like them I had...
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“Your muscles have a certain memory about them. That’s why we can tie our own...”
– Josh Beattie (via halus)
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Midnight Declarations
Put one foot in front of the other and become the person you want to be and when it’s hard and upsetting in a way that it doesn’t feel it should be remind yourself that each foot falling into step is better than the alternative, that it is better than settling in at the bottom of a dried up well and never climbing out.
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Sorry, my head hurts. Perpetually.
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“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
– Haruki Murakami
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Speculation
I imagine a smile at a distance. I imagine you’ll be kind and inviting. I don’t know how I’ll be. I would like to be happy. I would like to be confident. I would like to be indifferent towards you. Will we stumble? Will the months of silence need to be addressed? I doubt it. I don’t think we’ll share a bed again. I don’t know that we’ll be friends. I...
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“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.”
– Anne Sexton
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I went to Barcelona. I read Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness. I went to Florence. I read Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This is me, by myself, on Spring Break. I can’t tell if I’m dissatisfied or not. I don’t think I should be dissatisfied, but, you know, should is one of those words my therapist suggests I not use. She only ever makes suggestions. She...
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“Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you...”
– Margaret Atwood
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“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
– Flannery O’Connor
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Correspondence
Perhaps I should have began my letter:
It’s not so much that I am too busy to write, but rather that I write to you with great care and consciousness and I have not recently been inspired to say anything provoking.
But then I wondered if I had usually been provoking and what kind of disclaimer I would need to attach to all future letters.
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Ich möchte
Grande never used to be a part of my vocabulary when visiting Starbucks and then I went to Europe and small was small and skim milk was non-existent and cafes that stayed open past six turned into bars and wifi access required a password and the desire to drown in a cup of green tea became more and more pronounced. I would spend over 2 Euro on each of those grande teas and I was too ashamed to...
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“I’m not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except...”
– John Green
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Lonely at Intervals
This is merely an interval.
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“Something happened here. In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the...”
– Alice Munro
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She entered one of the quieter and dimmer galleries on the second floor. She sat down on one of the smooth white benches and felt her tears being released slowly, calmly down her face. Her breath remained even. (This was all in contrast to what would happen minutes later when she stepped outside, slipped on her oversize sunglasses and sobbed hysterically, rapidly, audibly). She was sitting across...
