January 2010
29 posts
“I don’t write to forget what happened; I write to remember. There are...”
– Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease
Everyone has a First Love. Some, lucky enough,...
“I went to the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your...”
– Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
Oh by the way, did you know that at La Forketta, they have a pizza with your name? Your mom and I had a laugh, and I could picture you laughing along with us, and insisting that we order it just for laughs.
Just had lunch with your mom; it was lovely and we both miss you.
Katharine Clifton: My darling. I'm waiting for you. How long is the day in the dark? Or a week? The fire is gone, and I'm horribly cold. I really should drag myself outside but then there'd be the sun. I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings, not writing these words. We die. We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we've entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we've hidden in — like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. Where the real countries are. Not boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you'll come carry me out to the Palace of Winds. That's what I've wanted: to walk in such a place with you. With friends, on an earth without maps. The lamp has gone out and I'm writing in the darkness.
“What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead...”
– Donna Tartt, The Secret History
“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days — three...”
– John Keats
“You’ll win, because you’ve chosen the hardest way of fighting for...”
– Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Dear Bianca,
The day was warm, and we drove with the windows open. Breeze on my arms as I drove. Savor it now, the day, the breeze. Run the memory of it over your tongue. Speak it aloud; there’s no one listening. Say “sun” and “hot” and “day.” Close your eyes and remember the moment, the warm pink life of it.
— Carolyn Parkhurst, The Dogs of Babel
Life is fragile and soon disappears. If you don’t own it, you don’t lose it.
I was fine with being alone so one day when we get separated, will you come back when I call your name? Listen, listen to my voice when you feel lonely.
Life is fragile indeed and partings are sudden. I will always be deep in sorrow for losing her but, the time I have spent with her—I don’t think I...
“You are the only thing I have that is neither duty nor obligation, the only...”
– Holly Black, Ironside
“I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without...”
– Franz Kafka, The Castle
Listen
She was originally mine, but I lost her.
“Someday no one will remember that she ever existed, I wrote in my notebook, and...”
– John Green, Looking for Alaksa
“The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them.”
– Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
“Elspeth? Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her...”
– Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry
“All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each...”
– Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Je suis désolé. Je veux pas que tu partes.
“I thought, there is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this...”
– Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time
“She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately—a...”
– Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“The story of her life. God gave you everything just to take it away. Just so you...”
– Janet Fitch, Paint It Black