"The Hours" by Michael Cunningham
There are two choices only. You can be capable or uncaring. You can produce a masterful cake by your own hand or, barring that, light a cigarette, declare yourself hopeless at such projects, pour yourself another cup of coffee, and order a cake from the bakery.
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We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.
Heaven only knows why we love it so.
Native Son by Richard Wright
"He shut their voices out of his mind. He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they lived, they shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair."
The Abortion: an historical romance
I have been sitting at this desk for hours, staring into the darkened shelves of books. I love their presence, the way they honour the wood they rest upon.
I know it's going to rain.
Clouds have been playing with the blue style of the sky all day long, moving their heavy black wardrobes in, but so far nothing rain has happened.
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What an abstract thing it is to take your clothes off in front of a stranger for the very first time. It isn't really what we planned on doing. Your body almost looks away from itself and is a stranger to this world.
We live most of our lives privately under our clothes, except in a case like Vida whose body lived outside of herself like a lost continent, complete with dinosaurs of her own choosing.
'I'll turn the lights out,' she said, sitting next to me on the bed.
I was startled to hear her panic. She seemed almost relaxed a few seconds before. My, how fast she could move the furniture about in her mind. I responded to this by firmly saying, 'No, please don't.'
Her eyes stopped moving for a few seconds. They came to a crashing halt like blue aeroplanes.
'Yes,' she said. 'That's a good idea. It will be very hard, but I have no other choice. I can't go on like this forever.'
She gestured towards her body as if it were far away in some lonesome valley and she, on top of a mountain, looking down. Tears came suddenly to her eyes. There was now rain on the blue wings of the aeroplanes.
Then she stopped crying withoun a tear having left her eyes. I looked again and all the tears had vanished. 'We have to leave the lights on,' she said. 'I won't cry. I promise.'
I reached out and, for the first time in two billion years, I touched her. I touched her hand. My fingers went carefully over her fingers. Her hand was almost cold.
'You're cold.' I said.
'No,' she said. 'It's only my hand.'
She moved slightly, awkwardly towards me and rested her head on my shoulder. When her head touched me, I could feel my blood leap forward, my nerves and muscles stretch like phantoms towards the future.
My shoulder was drenched in smooth white skin and long bat-flashing hair. I let go of her hand and touched her face. It was tropical.
'See,' she said, smiling faintly. 'It was only my hand.'
It was fantastic trying to work around her body, not wanting to startle her like a deer and have her go off running into the woods.
I poetically shifted my shoulder like the last lines of a Shakespearen sonnet (Love is a babe; then might I not say so, / To give full growth to that which still doth grow.) and at the same time lowered her back onto the bed.
She lay there looking up at me as I crouched forward, descending slowly, and kissed her on the mouth as gently as I could. I did not want that first kiss to have attached to it the slightest gesture or flower of the meat market.
The Beautiful and Damned - F. S. Fitzgerald
I found this really funny:
"Her bosom is still a pavement she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness."
And then I found it sad and pathetic.
