Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 72

CarrollBlog 10.22

Where do ah-ha! moments come from? Those critical but infrequent out of nowhere heaven's gift- synapses in our brains that bang together like freight cars coupling–Ka-Chunk! Suddenly we frown, look up at the ceiling or down at our feet, our mouth drops open stupidly or closes tight because after such a synapse sizzles together, we instantly finally clearly see how it works, or understand how it happened, the right way to do it, or what was there in front of us all along but two blinks ago we ...

CarrollBlog 10.21

Women are always complaining about men's fascination with breasts. But what if men were absolutely indifferent to breasts? What would women do then with these things that serve a single function once or twice in a lifetime, and the rest of the time are just in the way?

CarrollBlog 10.20

"Near the end of his life, living in Berlin with his lover, Franz Kafka went for a walk in the park and saw a little girl crying. He asked her what the matter was, and she told him that she had lost her doll. Without missing a beat, Kafka assured the little girl that the doll wasn't lost, only traveling; Kafka knew this for a fact, he said, because the doll had written him a letter describing her journeys, which he promised to bring the girl the next day. Every day for three weeks, he...

CarrollBlog 10.19

"Kaspar suddenly thought of Sivan Ehrenpreis. One of the sexiest women he'd ever known, they'd had an affair a decade ago but on realizing they had little else in common besides a mutual panting for each other's bodies, they split. Afterwords he heard about her from different people—she'd gotten married, had children, gotten divorced, remarried.

"The only other time he'd ever seen her again was years later standing in front of a toy store window at Christmas time in Brooklyn...

CarrollBlog 10.18

First Grade

by Ron Koertge

Until then, every forest

had wolves in it, we thought

it would be fun to wear snowshoes

all the time, and we could talk to water.

So why is this woman with the gray

breath calling out names and pointing

to the little desks we will occupy

for the rest of our lives?

CarrollBlog 10.17

"Here's something you must know and don't forget it- animals never lie. They don't lie, they don't put on disguises, and they are always true to what they are. That's why you can trust them."

"Excuse me, but I do not trust lions. or bears or snakes--"

"That's because you want them to be the creatures you imagined as a child. Lions should be the strong but sweet beasts in a Disney cartoon. But they aren't, so when they start acting like lions you're angry at them for not...

CarrollBlog 10.16

At the end of their relationship she asked if they could still remain friends. His face was expressionless when he said, "No. Because we put friends in boxes, like we do with everything else in life for convenience sake. Most friends you see only occasionally, and even the ones you see a lot still all have their boxes, their specific place in your life and no more. That's one of the best things about being someone's love– you don't have one box in their life because you're in all of them...

CarrollBlog 10.15

"Loving someone is easy: It's your car and all you have to do is start the engine, give it a little gas and point the machine wherever you want to go. But *being* loved is like going for a ride in someone else's car. Even if you think they'll be a good driver, you also have a lurking fear that they might end up doing something disastrous and in an instant you'll both be flying through the windshield towards pain and later on, your heart billing you big time for this ride. Being loved can...

CarrollBlog 10.14

Three women are standing in a doorway. All three have those long white canes that indicate they are blind. In their other hands they hold cigarettes. As they chat they puff merrily away. They're real hardcore smokers by the look of things. As a one- time devotee of the delights of tobacco, I watch them thinking what is the pleasure of smoking when you can't see it? I remember in the old days I'd have a cigarette in the dark once in a while but always found it very unsatisfying if I couldn't s...

CarrollBlog 10.13

"In Highland, New Guinea, now Papua, New Guinea a British district officer named James Taylor contacted a mountain village above three thousand feet, whose tribe had never seen any trace of the outside world. It was the 1930's. He described the courage of one villager. One day, on the airstrip hacked from the mountains near his village, this man cut vines and tied himself with them to the body of Taylor's airplane shortly before it took off. He explained calmly to his loved ones that, no...