Enlightenment

by Sarah Perry

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them.

The dissatisfaction that had dogged him all his life was amplified by the monotony of the day, and he was struck by the sensation that he’d always been waiting for events that never came.

“The stars don’t need finding. You go out and look up and there they always are.”

“My father told me,” said Carleton, “that when a telescope is used for the first time, whatever the astronomer sees that night is called the ‘first light.’

I think on the whole I’d rather be prone to being fooled than be too wise a man for wonder.

prolixity

We are just like the earth, I think: “insignificantly small,” as Kepler said once, “but borne through stars.”

This troubled her. The people of Bethesda gave the stars very little thought: God had riveted them in place on the fourth day, and that was that. To think any further entailed reaches of time and distance at odds with Genesis, and so at odds with God—she put the paper down.

He was occupied in unknotting rope. This was difficult, since all the knuckles of his hands were swollen, and his left thumb, seeming to have moved an inch or so down the wrist toward the elbow, was of no use.