- and so we got to be, for each other, what the other missed.
- i guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they’re making love. the love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.
- it’s funny what you hold on to to get through terror when terror surrounds you. i guess i’ll remember until i die that black lady’s white rose. (reminds me of this)
- though the death took many forms, though people died early in many different ways, the death itself was very simple and the cause was simple, too: as simple as a plague: the kids had been told that they weren’t worth shit and everything they saw around them proved it. they struggled, they struggled, but they fell, like flies, and they congregated on the garbage heaps of their lives, like flies.
- he worked on wood that way. he worked on stone that way. if i had never seen him work, i might never have known he loved me. it’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.
- i suddenly looked up into his face. no one can describe this, i really shouldn’t try. his face was bigger than the world, his eyes deeper than the sun, more vast than the desert, all that had ever happened since time began was in his face.
- it’s astounding the first time you realize that a stranger has a body – the realization that he has a body makes him a stranger. it means that you have a body, too. you will live with this forever, and it will spell out the language of your life.
- within this hardness moved his love, moved as a torrent or as a fire moves, above reason, beyond argument, not to be modified in any degree by anything life might do. i was his, and he was mine – i suddenly realized that i would be a very unlucky and perhaps a dead girl should i ever attempt to challenge this decree.
- fonny: chews on the rib, and watches me: and, in complete silence, without moving a muscle, we are laughing with each other. we are laughing for many reasons. we are together somewhere where no one can reach us, touch us, joined. we are happy, even, that we have food enough for daniel, who eats peacefully, not knowing that we are laughing, but sensing that something wonderful has happened to us, which means that wonderful things happen, and that maybe something wonderful will happen to him. it’s wonderful, anyway, to be able to help a person to have that feeling.
- “i know i can’t help you very much right now – god knows what i wouldn’t give if i could. but i know about suffering; if that helps. i know that it ends. i ain’t going to tell you no lies, like it always ends for the better. sometimes it ends for the worse. you can suffer so bad that you can be driven to a place where you can’t ever suffer again: and that’s worse.” she took both my hands and held them tightly between her own. “try to remember that. and: the only way anything ever gets done is when you make up your mind to do it.”
- “i don’t want to sound foolish. but, just remember, love brought you here. if you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.”
- “don’t think i don’t know you love me. you believe we going to make it?” then, i am calm. there are tears on his face, his or mine, i don’t know. i kiss him where our tears fall.
- when two people love each other, when they really love each other, everything that happens between them has something of a sacramental air. they can sometimes seem to be driven very far from each other: i know of no greater torment, no more resounding void – when your lover has gone! but tonight, with our vows so mysteriously menaced, and with both of us, though from different angles, placed before this fact, we were more profoundly together than we had ever been before. take care of each other, joseph had said. you going to find out it’s more than a notion.
- i am always there for the six o’clock visit. and Fonny knows thati will be there. it is very strange, and i now begin to learn a very strange thing. my presence, which is of no practical value whatever, which can even be considered, from a practical point of view, as a betrayal, is vastly more important than any practical thing i might be doing. every day, when he sees my face, he knows, again, that i love him – and God knows i do, more and more, deeper and deeper, with every hour. but it isn’t only that. it means that others love him, too, love him so much that they have set me free to be there. he is not alone; we are not alone. and if i am somewhat terrified by the fact that i no longer have anything which can be called a waistline, he is delighted.
- his tools are on the table. he walks around the wood, terrified. he does not want to touch it. he knows that he must. but he does not want to defile the wood. he stares and stares, almost weeping. he wishes that the wood would speak to him; he is waiting for the wood to speak. until it speaks, he cannot move.
- this is always the most awful moment, when fonny has to rise and turn, I have to rise and turn. but fonny is cool. he stands, and raises his fist. he smiles, and stands there for a moment, looking me dead in the eye. something travels from him, to me, it is love and courage. yes. yes. we are going to make it, somehow. somehow.
- joseph watches the daughters. he sees something very strange, something he had never thought of: he sees that adrienne loves her father with a really desperate love. she knows he is in pain. she would soothe it if she could, she does not know how. she would give anything to know how.
- he grins again, and everything inside me moves. oh, love. love.
- “where you lead me,” i said, “i’ll follow.” he laughed. “baby. baby. baby. i love you. and i’m going to build us a table and a whole lot of folks going to be eating off it for a long, long time to come.”
jul 8 2022 ∞
jul 10 2022 +