The raising of a child is the building of a cathedral. You can’t cut corners.

dave eggers, A Hologram for the King

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And yet what else does it mean to be loved, Samson wondered, than to be understood?  What else but to be profoundly touched by another?  He thought about who he had been before the tumor, telling the story of his old life like a sad tale.  Once there had been a woman he loved whose body he had taken into his own hands, maybe amazed that such touching left no impression.  Turning on the bedside lamp, he had found her unmarked.  Her name was a sound you could go through, coming out the other side onto an identical place, Anna, a mirror image, a double echo in which there was nothing to grasp onto.  Maybe he had loved her too much, feeling he was unable to get her close enough; that so long as she remained a separate person, he could get to know her only so well.  And because the core of her would always remain elusive threatening to slip away, he’d switched course and faded away to protect himself from the loss, his voice breaking up, over and out, like a pilot’s adrift in space.

Once there was a woman he loved.  That was how it had begun.  But from there the story might have unfolded any number of ways. Only the end was the same: he had emptied himself of the ballast of memory and lunged weightless into the future.  Alone and astonished, attempting to take with him not even a trace.  In the end he had betrayed the woman he loved, and who was there who would not judge him for that?

There were five full glasses of wine in front of me, but the wine teacher told us that we were not allowed to drink any of them until after we finished the lesson. I imagine this is how dogs feel when you put a biscuit on their nose and tell them not to eat it. Except I totally stole sips of the wine when the teacher wasn’t looking, because I’m really shitty at being an obedient dog.

Jenny Lawson, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

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days consisted of long walks, lounging outside.  thinking

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Almost home
When I missed the bottom stair
You were braiding your gray hair
It had grown so long
Since I’d been gone

And the perfect girls
By the pool, they would protest
The cross around their necks
But our sons were overseas
And we all know about the hive and the honey bees

Almost home
With an olive branch and a dove
You were beating on a Persian rug
With your bible and your wedding band
Both hidden on a TV stand

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for my best friend

We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.

sylvia plath

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I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot.
It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone.

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Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.

jennifer egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

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Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.

–

You picked a lemon, throw it away lemonade is overrated. Freaks should remain at the circus, not in your apartment. You already have one asshole. You don’t need another. Make a space in your life for the glorious things you deserve. Have faith.

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now a proud member of new york’s Dinner Lab

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