I want my own bed, in my own apartment. Home sweet home. No place like home. Take me home, country roads. Home is where the heart is. But my heart is here. So I must be home.
I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room.
I breathe slowly and deeply. I make my eyes still under eyelids, I make my mind still, and soon, Sleep, seeing a perfect reproduction of himself, comes to be united with his facsimile.
All of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.
I make books because I love them as objects; because I want to put the pictures and the words together, because I want to tell a story.
Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?
I am afraid of the future; it seems to be a big box waiting for me.
I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense.
Sometimes a thing is--too much--and it has to be put away.
We laugh and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.
I guess no matter what your family is like, you're not surprised.
I want to be haunted...Haunt me...Come and put your arms around me...Or, if you can't do that, just look at me. That's all I need. Where are you? Not here. But I can't feel you gone either...I keep looking for you. I forget. I feel stupid...Haunt me, find me, come back from wherever you are. Be with me. I'm afraid.
Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?
I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson.
Julia thought him beautiful, though she knew it was the beauty of damage.
It's terrific, Clare," Henry says, and we stare at each other, and I think, "Don't leave me.
Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you're dead?
Why has he gone where I cannot follow?
When I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.
I love. I have loved. I will love.
Henry loves me. Henry is here, finally, now, finally. And I love him.
I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.
Dead people need us to remember them, even if it eats us, even if all we can do is say I'm sorry until it is as meaningless as air.
That's Henry. When he makes you moan and cry, don't say nobody never told you.
I've noticed that Henry needs an incredible amount of physical activity all the time in order to be happy. It's like hanging out with a greyhound.
I hate to be where sheis not,when she is not. And yet I am always going, and she cannot follow.
The hell with virtue. I've figured out the mechanics of her dress.
But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.
Elspeth stood in the sun, letting it pour through her, watching the Kitten sleep. I want you. Elspeth felt depressed. She had never thought of herself as someone who would kill a beautiful white kitten while it napped. But apparently she was that sort of person. Don't you worry, Kitten. I'll put you right back.
Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.
Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?" her husband, Jack, asked her. "I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson.
We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.
But don't you think that it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?
She smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy.
The only thing we can do is to say ‘Fuck it' over and over again, really loud, until someone stops us.
If you are far away from your lover and family, if you have lost someone, if you feel a bit displaced in your own life: these stories are for you.
I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.
Each of them warmed to the sound of the other's voice. They lay in the dark together, in distant cities, each of them thinking, We were lucky this time. And they pressed their phones closer to their ears, and both of them wondered how much longer this separation could go on.
Listen, sometimes when you finally find out, you realize that you were much better off not knowing.
You can still be cool when you're dead. In fact, it's much easier, because you aren't getting old and fat and losing your hair.
Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments line up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?
To world enough and time.
When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, change into a desperate version of myself.
So in order to cope, I pick locks, shoplift, pick pockets, mug people, panhandle, break and enter, steal cars, lie, fold, spindle, and mutilate. You name it, I've done it.
When we were that young we invented the world, no one could tell us a thing.
I was thinking; it's very peaceful, here with you. It's nice to just lie here and know that the future is sort of taken care of. Henry?
Dream are different than real life but important too.
He didn't take care of you; you had to take care of yourself.
That's the thing about living vicariously; it's so much faster than actual living. In a few minutes we'll be worrying about names for the children.
