Havoc

by Christopher Bollen

The world has become a nightmare, more a box than a sphere, splintering at every edge.

Believe it or not, I want people to be happy. Or if not happy, then free.

a face chiseled by a lifetime of earnest expressions.

I’ve discovered that it isn’t so much the eyes of strangers you miss in old age as the pleasure in your own eyes at the sight of yourself.

Grief has no sense of theater; it nestles itself into the most ordinary corners of the day.

(For a while I did count; for the first thousand days I added a new digit every morning to the grief pile, in hopes it would eventually topple and crush me under its weight.)

For fifty-four years we didn’t just finish each other’s sentences; we could start them.

I change people’s lives for the better, whether they see it that way or not. Only once did my actions end for the worse. But I don’t like to think about the murder.

It isn’t my obligation to solve the problems of strangers. But that vow proved easier said than done.

perhaps this woman didn’t need my help. Some people don’t. Trying to save them is pointless.

Not every couple can have what Peter and I did—an eternal bond that nothing could break.

There are those who don’t want that kind of love, who prefer the hug of their own loneliness ...

You don’t owe anyone your misery.

Well, I work with the circumstances given to me. I don’t make fate. I only twist it.

I’ve found that it’s essential during these extraordinary times to establish a few dependable routines to prevent the whole world from spinning into madness.

run around full commando with our hearts, don’t you think? Live for today! Do whatever the hell you want!

At my age, injuries appear out of nowhere, like dangerous men on the sides of highways, trying to convince you to stop for them.

As is the case in so many places in the world, beauty is a liability here.

We all need to escape our lives every so often. To recognize the cage we’ve found ourselves in, the bars around us that we’ve accepted as normal because they’ve risen up so slowly and imperceptibly over the years. That’s how life betrays you, day by day, when you aren’t paying attention.”

What are we? So little when all the accounting is done.

Now loneliness is gripping me in this crumbling tunnel. How strange to feel orphaned at eighty-one.

We’re a small, eclectic group gathered here to say our goodbyes to the day.

Fear is more unshakable than love,

The small and frail can be conquered—that is an American fact.

In the past six years, I’ve lost my most cherished possessions—a husband, a daughter, a house, a country—but it’s the tiniest concerns that keep a person tossing and turning at night.

My mistake was being too kind, wanting more from them than they were able to give.

Not for the first time, it dawns on me that Americans are the least at home of any people in the world, never quite able to settle into their surroundings, a part of them always off somewhere better or worse in their heads.

We do have fun here at the Royal Karnak; we act like clowns from time to time to entertain one another.

“Set.” The god of havoc, of disorder, of foreigners and storms. I recall trying to tell Otto about this god in the tombs.

disappointment can be a gift, absence, loss, humiliation—that’s a gift you never stop opening.

As full-time residents of Earth, we’re all keenly aware of the lengthening days after the winter solstice. And yet to celebrate the sun’s disappearance each evening is to watch a ballroom extend right below your feet, the band playing one more encore, the bartender carrying out a fresh box of champagne.

Souvenirs are consolations for lonely travelers, a reminder that there’s someone at home eager for your return—and

Children aren’t the world’s inheritors, they are its thieves, skating by on the hard work of generations that came before them.

What a way to see it!

I decide to lie, which is all adults do to kids anyway, lie to them viciously about the benevolence of the world we’re passing on to them.

Poor beauty, punished for doing only what came naturally to her.

After age seventy, you develop a businesslike relationship with your body, a chilly nod at the mirror in the morning will suffice.

I’ve found that the best way to hide a secret is to keep it from yourself.

You can only withstand losing everything in your life once. There can be no second time.

If the dead came to life again, even for a second on a screen, I would die of heartbreak.

Madness too is a kind of protection, a suit of armor to ward off calls for reason and proportion,

I know it isn’t my daughter, and yet to touch the illusion, to put my arms around a phantom, would mean so much to me, would be enough.

(I suppose it’s an American trait to expect people to point to the wound that needs to be treated.)

I nod in understanding, hating myself for my incurable helpfulness.

Unfortunate Mood

God, am I a terrible mother? Did I raise a horrible child?” Yes.

lol

I stare at the idiot across from me.

Thats crazy but real

It’s always the parent who can’t see the true nature of their children, blind to the obvious, refusing to connect the dots.

Relief from physical exertion is so easily confused with a sense of accomplishment.

But it was better to be gone than sorry.

The colossal, overwhelming chaos of Covid made smaller, less urgent chaoses nearly impossible to keep track of.

All I am is a graveyard.