Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 12

My friend Pat and the turtles

“On my first night in Vienna, Jonathan Carroll walked me over to the Danube, where we sat on a flight of steps leading down to the river. The dog walkers were out in force. Greetings were exchanged with small movements of the eyes, and the dogs sniffed one another fondly…Jonathan kept his eye on a woman at the next bridge. She was moving so slowly I thought she might be leading a dogsled pulled by escargots. After an hour, the woman walked in front of us, and she bowed her head in acknowledgm...

Freight

“You know those freight trains that crawl by, 200 cars and a mile or more long? If you’re stuck at a crossing you have to wait half an hour for it to pass. That’s what her life has been so far — a miles-long freight train of wrong decisions, emotional boomerangs, and flat out fuck ups. And because you’re in her life, you’re waiting forever at the crossing for it to end.”

Freight was originally published in Jonathan Carroll on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting...

They March

“Young men marching through life, all confidence and hard-ons, more sure of themselves than they will ever be, more unsure of things too. Their voices too loud, cologne too strong, haircuts perfect or shaved to the skull, jeans skin tight and ripped just right, or pants so baggy they could fit a whole pet shop inside. She watched them, listened to their conversations. As they passed she was their dream two second audience. She hoped some of the day lived up to their expectations, but knew at...

How She Puts on Lotion

I love watching women put on hand lotion. They apply it so thoroughly but with such a kind of careless ease. They’re usually occupied with something else while doing it like talking to you, watching television, or reading a book. It’s one of those small but graceful talents women have — like putting up or arranging their hair — that they’re unaware of. If you bring it to their attention they look at you quizzically and maybe say “Why do you think that’s beautiful?”And truth be told, it’s hard...

What Saves Us

People are supposed to keep us sane at difficult times. But sometimes things are better at saving us. Your afternoon cup of hot tea with rum, a beautiful poem someone sent, or the train trip where there was nothing to do but stare out the window while your mind worked its way out of the sad-swamp. Mundane things that through some kind of small quiet magic, firmly ground or hold us when we feel everything else slipping away.

What Saves Us was originally published in Jonathan Carroll on Medium,...

Object

Across the room on top of the old woman’s dresser, lined up carefully next to each other like soldiers at inspection, were three objects she looked at but rarely touched every day, sometimes several times a day if she was feeling particularly low or lost. Each reminded her in a different way that there had been shining moments in her moribund life, whole days, weeks even, when she’d been so grateful to be alive and exactly where she was that the only words in her soul’s vocabulary at those mo...

Patina

photo by Elfriede Stegemeyer

“She has no patina.”

“What do you mean?”

“Life’s made no significant mark on her, despite the fact she’s halfway through it. No real scratches or creases. It’s like whatever life has thrown at her, she’s impervious to it, she’s Kevlar. Her soul hasn’t been darkened or stained by what she’s experienced; but neither has it been healed or enriched in any kind of beautiful or interesting way.”

“But isn’t that a good thing?”

“No, for better or worse life should not leave an...

Purple

Late afternoon. The café is crowded but that’s okay because I like to stand at a counter with wake-up coffee and watch the world from there. Looking around the room there’s the usual crowd of shoppers, mothers with their kids in tow having a naughty before-dinner sweet treat, an old guy or two reading the newspaper.

Over in a corner of the place are a group of four teenage girls chatting and laughing. I glance at them and look away, only to snap my eyes back a second later having seen somethin...

Masterpiece

“At the end of their relationship, Patterson wrote to her ‘Any great love, any real happiness for that matter, is a masterpiece.You may not want my love, but you can never, ever again say you haven’t been fully loved. That would be a very bad lie.’”

from the new novel

Masterpiece was originally published in Jonathan Carroll on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Feast That You Are

Think about it for a minute — I mean this seriously. In your whole life right up until today, how many people have really understood you? You, the whole package, not just the separate pieces — the vision, the humor, the needs, the dreams, the hopes and fears, the insight… Your own special way of interacting with the daily world…

I believe if we’re lucky there will be only a few people in our lifetime who understand us and our choices. Maybe even only one. But more importantly, they will apprec...