Autobiography of Red

by Anne Carson

The instant of nature forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life leaving behind just ghosts rustling like an old map. He had nothing to say to anyone. He felt loose and shiny.

Love does not make me gentle or kind, thought Geryon as he and his mother eyed each other from opposite shores of the light.

this idea that your lungs will explode if you can’t reach the surface— lungs don’t explode they collapse without oxygen I have it from Virginia Woolf who once spoke to me at a party not of course about drowning of which she had no idea yet—have I told you this story before? I remember the sky behind her was purple she came towards me saying Why are you alone in this huge blank garden like a piece of electricity? Electricity? Maybe she said cakes and tea true we were drinking gin it was long past teatime but she was a highly original woman I was praying God let it have been cakes and tea I’ll tell her my anecdote of Buenos Aires those Argentines so crazy for tea every day at five the little cups but she drifted away the little translucent cups like bones you know in Buenos Aires I had a small dog but I see by your face I am wandering.

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

This was when Geryon liked to plan his autobiography, in that blurred state between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul.

It was raining on his face. He forgot for a moment that he was a brokenheart then he remembered.

He slammed the window shut. Below in the living room everything was motionless. Drapes closed, chairs asleep. Huge wads of silence stuffed the air. He was staring around for the dog then realized they hadn’t had a dog for years.

am a skeptic. You doubt God? Well more to the point I credit God with the good sense to doubt me. What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us? For an instant God suspends assent and poof! we disappear. It happens to me frequently. You disappear? Yes and then come back. Moments of death I call them. Have an olive, he added as the waiter’s arm flashed between them with a plate. Thank you, said Geryon and bit into an olive. The pimiento stung his mouth alive like sudden sunset. He was very hungry and ate seven more, fast. Smiling a bit Lazer watched him. You eat like my daughter. With a certain shall I say lucidity. How old is your daughter? asked Geryon. Four—not quite human. Or perhaps a little beyond human. It is because of her I began to notice moments of death. Children make you see distances.

We would think ourselves continuous with the world if we did not have moods.

“… I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us.…”