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- I could no longer see her head in the rear-view mirror; she had fallen asleep.
- Inside the store she clung to my arm, and I felt the palm of her hand damp from excitement.
- ...moving awkwardly in her new high-heeled shoes...
- I walked down to the harbor; an hour before sunset, when the air was cooling, the fishing boats put out for the night. I watched them slide over the calm, almost waveless water until their long, low forms vanished from sight. The islands suddenly lost the light reflected from their rocky spines & grew stark and black. And then, as though drawn silently beneath the surface, they disappeared one by one.
- Unexpectedly I caught the sound of people talking in an alien language. Turning, I saw two women sitting close to the water. Folds of gray, heavily veined fat hung from their thighs & upper arms; their full, pendulous breasts were squashed in outsize brassieres.
- I could see the sanatorium & distinguish the pale faces of the new arrivals from the tanned faces of the long-term patients who sunned themselves on the terraces.
- ...the night routine & the lights would be extinguished, as if snatched from one window after the next.
- The silhouettes touched and merged as if they were the fragments of a shadow being mended.
- My shadow fell across her when I introduced myself.
- The hands on the bedspread were thin, with a delicate network of bluish veins.
- Their clumsy dresses flapped like the wings of restless birds.
- I held the soft plump cushion of fresh snow from the frozen railings. For a moment it shimmered in my warm palm before turning into dripping slush.
- I went to the zoo to see an octopus I had read about. It was housed in an aquarium and fed on live crabs, fish, mussels -- and on itself. It nibbled at its own tentacles, consuming them one after another. Obviously the octopus was slowly killing itself. ...A man jokingly remarked that by eating itself it was presumably acknowledging its own defeat.
- There was a serenity about her that went beyond unconcern.
- There was a familiarity to her touch, as though her hands were guided over my skin by the current she felt pulsing underneath it; had I desired to use my own hands on my body, I would have guided them along the same path.
- All we could do was to exist for each other solely as a reminder of the self.
- We used to muster at dawn on the packed, sun-baked earth of the parade ground, surrounded by forest.
- ...we swung our rifles that had become an extension of our bones and muscles.
- The sun touched the treetops, the light in the clearing was dim.
- ...standing out clearly against the green of the foliage.
- When I looked at the couple again, they lay in the swaying grass like two surfer abruptly swept off their boards by an unpredictable wave.
- ...his rifle lay across his knees and he lolled peacefully against the boughs that gave with the drowsy sway of the forest. I peered at him cautiously until the bluish air drooped over the scraggly trees, and darkness rose as though born from the dew which covered the ground.
- ...all that was left was a pair of surprisingly clean white tennis shoes.
- Frequently I watched the small children wobbling on their plump legs, stumbling, falling, getting up again, as though borne up by the same force that steadies sunflowers buffeted by the wind.
- She realized that she and her brother could become allies against the rest of the world... But if it did work out, it would be so comfortable, so convenient... It would be an alliance unlike one she could have with anyone else.
- "I felt I had an obligation to know myself better--apart from the self you have brought me to know. I thought I might be completely bound to you simply because you had influenced me so much."
- "I chose that part of me which wants you over and above the self I would become with him. Above all, I know that I alone decided this."
- ...my body throbbing with the force which makes trees reach upward to drive out blossoms from small, shrunken buds. I was young.
- Sitting back in the warm water, I could hear only the measured dripping of the tap.
- "You also offer only the side of yourself which you think is most acceptable to me. So far neither of us has revealed anything which contradicts what we have both always assumed."
- Some of (the temples) were grandiose: drenched in white marble, with brass and silver trimmings, with florid mosaics on the floor, crystal chandeliers, elaborate systems of ventilation. 'You sit in your stall--and think,' he continued. 'And you hear your thoughts hovering about you like Greek gods suddenly freed from the textbooks. But you are not overheard. What a joy to be left alone at last, not having to care about what others say or how they look at you, or how you seem to them, without having to look outside the white walls of your private sanctuary.'"
- "Gods and temples are not easily set up."
- It seemed as though her whole body were molded from a single flexible fiber, so fluid were the complex positions into which she bent herself. Every part of her radiated lightness and strength. As I watched her, I felt turgid and slow.
- It was now barely light. No wind reached the lower branches of the birches, and the leaves of the bushes hung inert as though hammered out of lead.
- Admired, she was never possessed.
- As the term wore on, I noticed her preoccupation with her own body.
- "...and the taste of it was horribly, oily, slimy, lumpy... and besides, it was degrading, almost like eating living flesh."
- The wrinkled hands emerged from the hollows of his black sleeves; they looked like clusters of scorched weeds as they rested on the sunlit wooden table.
- I sipped my wine, watching the broken sunbeams on the rounded bottom of my glass. (91)
- This, he said, had been part of his philosophy for a very long time; he had always located the essential truth of his life in his wants and compulsions.
- Somewhere in the building a violin was being played. As I walked slowly down the stairs, the music seemed to be chasing the specks of dust that floated in the grayish light.
- After we had nearly filled the jar with butterflies, we placed lighted matches under the rim. The blue smoke rose slowly about the pulsating blooms inside. At first it seemed that each new match added not death but life to the mass of living petals, for the insects flew faster and faster, colliding with each other, knocking the colored dust off their wings. Each time the smoke dimmed the glass, the butterflies repeated their frantic whirl.
- In spite of the scant attention he gave to anything around him, I found his presence disturbing.
- My memory, broken and uneven, was like an old cobblestone road.
- Now, airborne, I grew uneasy that I had done nothing in the last years to make my imminent arrival in another continent more real. Only the departure had reality. I felt cheated and robbed: so many years had led to nothing more than a seat on a plane. Had it been possible for me to fix the plane permanently in the sky, to defy the winds and clouds and all the forces pushing it upward and pulling it earthward, I would have willingly done so. I would have stayed in my seat with my eyes closed, all strength and passion gone, my mind as quiescent as a coat rack under a forgotten hat, and I would have remained there, timeless, unmeasured, unjudged, bothering no one, suspended forever between my past and my future.
- ...with every step my coat became heavier, more and more rain-sodden.
- In addition to the salespeople, there were panoramic mirrors hung strategically under the ceilings, in which I saw myself grotesquely enlarged or flattened like a griddle against a background of exotic fruits
- Though the ship was moored at the quay, she rolled as choppy winter currents pulled at her.
- The ship's portholes were dark; every time I peered into one of them I longed to be inside the cabin that lay behind. I longed to be the only passenger on that deserted ship, protected all about by steel walls, able to sleep and then awaken to some faraway sea, my identity gone, my destination uncharted.
- I was afraid I would be shoved overboard and that my heavy coat would drown me. I saw myself on the sea bed, my coat covering me like a shroud.
- It was a bright, clean shop, and one could see right into it through the large street window.
- Of necessity the truck and I became one. I began to feel with my body the space between the rear tires and the edge of the sidewalk and the space between the truck and precariously parked bicycles. I knew which wheel would flatten an empty beer can, and I could gauge the inch left between the clearance batons on the front fender and the uniform of a policeman directing traffic. I discovered that driving the truck had something in common with what I had experienced on skis. I had to project myself beyond my body into a motion that had not yet begun but was imminent and irreversible.
- Her addiction might regenerate all that had become flabby and moribund in her and at the same time break down what was stiff and rigid; she would acquire new desires and new habits and liberate herself from what she thought of me, from what she felt for me. Like a polyp she would expand and develop in unpredictable directions.
- "I don't know you apart from myself. When I am alone, when you are not here, you are no longer real: then, it's only imagining again."
- I walked through the districts where they lived surrounded by fetor and disease. They had nothing to possess or be proud of. They were united only by the shade of their skin -- and I envied them.
- I envied those who lived here and seemed so free, nothing to regret and nothing to look forward to. In the world of birth certificates, medical examinations, punch cards and computers, in the world of telephone books, passports, bank accounts, insurance plans, wills, credit cards, pensions, mortgages, and loans they lived unattached, each of them aware only of himself.
- If I could magically speak their language and change the shade of my skin, the shape of my skull, the texture of my hair, I would transform myself into one of them. This way I would drive away from me the image of what I once had been and what I might become; would drive away the fear of the law which I had learned, the idea of what failure meant, the yardstick of success; would banish the dream of possession, of things to be owned, used, and consumed, and the symbols of ownership -- credentials, diplomas, deeds. This change would give me no other choice but to remain alive.
- I would welcome the night, sister of my skin, cousin of my shadow, and have her shelter me and help me in my battle.
- I would wait for the midnight storm which whips the streets and blurs all shapes...
- I would wait for the dawn to see cars, trucks, buses approaching at great speed, and hear the bursting of their tires, the screech of their wheels, the thunder of their steel bodies -- suddenly grown weak as they crashed into each other like wineglasses pushed off the table.
- What I was about to do was inescapable, yet so unreal that it became senseless: I had to believe I was not myself any more and that whatever happened would be imaginary. I saw myself as someone else who felt nothing, who stood calm and composed, determined enough to stiffen his arms, to grasp and raise the weapon, to cut down the obstacle in his path. I knew I was strong enough to do it.
aug 16 2020 ∞
aug 16 2020 +
aug 16 2020 +