A streetlight comes on. Clara waits to see how long it will take another to join it. A minute passes, two minutes. Nothing. They must have different levels of sensitivity, she thinks. They must believe different things about what darkness is.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 59 : Immortalizing John Parker
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 59 : Immortalizing John Parker
Some of their best hours together had been passed sitting in this room, her living room, both of them reading, waiting for the sun to drop from view, the daylight to fade, staying there, in that early darkness together, not switching on a lamp, not yet. Tacitly agreeing to fight the evening off. Fight every ending off. Live within all transitions for every possible second.
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 58 : Immortalizing John Parker
She thinks of George and remembers again that he's died. Given time, she knows, that will fade. A day, a day, another day, another day, and soon, she'll be used to the idea. She won't like it, but at least she will know it without having to keep remembering again.
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 58 : Immortalizing John Parker
Clara Feinberg doesn't believe in God; she never has. She believes in time. Omnipotent, surely. Friend and foe both as deities of all religions seem to be. Determining everything about one's life, from the sudden absence of a man like George to the expiration date on a jar of mayonnaise. For now, time will be an ally of a kind, she knows.
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 55 : Immortalizing John Parker
It starts then for her with this odd mixture of familiarity and unfamiliarity, with a chain of thoughts set off by a particular shade of beige, and by the sensation of being back on the passenger side of a vehicle--riding shotgun, in the dead man's seat... It starts there, and then it shifts very quickly into discomfort, the scene being almost something she knows so intimately. It's that unbidden intimacy that slips in and unsettles her.
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 54 : Immortalizing John Parker
Something changed in her, he would say. Something changed, and it wasn't for the worse. Once or twice he ever asked her if she would consider trying to make a go of it again, but the answer was always no. It wasn't an unusual story, he would say. At least not in the beginning. Boy meets girl. Boy cats around. Boy loses girl.
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This - Pg 47 : If I Loved You
There is a universe of sorrow, wide and dark, in my husband's staring eyes. An eternity built there, constructed over time, forged gradually of the realization that this is in fact our lives. This is what we have been dealt.
It's possible, I say to him, that you were right. What you said about some folks just being bad.
But as I speak, I realize how little I want to say what I have learned. How reluctant I am to admit to Sam what indifference truly means, and has long meant to us both. I do not want to play a role in confirming that cruel universe that dwells inside my husband's eyes. But I do love him. I do love him very much. And so to him--if not to you--I speak the truth.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Better Living Through Plastic Explosive - Pg 170 : We Come in Peace
To err is human, to forgive divine. That old trout. We can tell you now that it's the other way around; a complex vice versa.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosive - Pg 162 : Mister Kakami
And Syd is thinking not now the picture will never be finished, or I'll never see Kakami again, but that he will never hear him. Because the kid was right: Kakami is a voice--ebullient, believing, his vision persuasive. It has led Sydney Gross this far, to an ending befitting the hero of a quest. A death in Technicolor, by the sea, by the hand of a mythical creature.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosive - Pg 158 : Mister Kakami
This is the darkness and dank not of night, but of a daytime basement, with the nearest source of light far away at the top of the stairs.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosive - Pg 157 : Mister Kakami
In a movie this would be the point where one of them spots remnants of their old campfire and loudly exclaims that they've been travelling in circles, upon which the two wanderers commence squabbling about what an idiot the other guy is and smack each other around and either make up or storm off in opposite directions only to meet up again later to dispatch a common enemy. But there are, of course, no campfire remains here, no here here, and all the trees look the goddamn same to Syd, so they may or may not have been going in circles.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosive - Pg 155 : Mister Kakami
Syd, who hasn't slept outdoors since a mismanaged bar mitzvah camp-out in the ravine behind his grandparents' Rosedale house when he was thirteen... hears all manner of amplified and unidentifiable sounds in the surrounding night. Flesh-eating plants busily masticating the remains of rodents; antean beasts lying in wait; the long-lost auntie, now spectral and gone feral, watching, as if watching could be called a sound. Here be monsters. Porgie refused to light a fire, saying it would disturb the balance in the forest.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosive - Pg 153: Mister Kakami
Because Because here is the movie, all around us. Here is the never-ending story. Patrick shoots and edits simultaneously as he moves through the rainforest, effortlessly synching sound with picture. Here there are no cuts, no retakes, no stopping to powder the immobile brows of Botoxed beauties, to reload film, to change a light gel, to wait around all afternoon for an all-too-brief magic hour in order to score the money shot. The layers of sound this deep in the forest are phenomenal. Even the mushrooms sing their song, in dozens of fungal dialects all eager to be heard. The lichen and the tree moss, hanging like Triton's beard, fizz and whisper. Here filtered light colludes with leaf and fern, evoking a sensation akin to being in the womb. Here is the green force that drives a fuse through every flower--both redeemer and destroyer.
Better Living Through Plastic Explosive - Pg 153 : Mister Kakami
Somewhere, far from shore, a glistening chinook salmon twists in a neat double helix through the water. Singing about oceans. Singing about love.
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