The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 8

by Beth Brower

“Life may tumble and jostle, now and again, but most things iron themselves out.” I paused, “Isn’t that right?”

“Gossip and meanness have a way of making one feel beaten down, but they themselves are of small origin. They have no character. So keep yours intact and carry on.”

I’ve no desire to read a thing and not recall three-fourths due to any number of distractions.

Hearts are intricate stretches of land. Mine is no exception.

“Might I please pretend he is wearing his horrible spectacles?” “No, Mary,” I firmly replied. “We prepare only for the most debilitating of circumstances.”

As much as this will sound offensively conventional, the men were wearing a tremendous amount of tweed. It is not a stereotype but a truth. And there is nothing for it but to record the fact. The men wore tweed and smoked pipes, eccentrics saturated in their particular field of study, hair like bird feathers more often than not. There were a few wives on arms, some of which looked bored. (The wives, not the arms.)

And how some are married. And some are not. Some have children. And some do not. Each circumstance slightly different from the next, yet they all carry their minds with them no matter.

Or rather, something in me that has been dormant, or limping along, is now trying to run and it has no place to go.

Perhaps I’ve lent a weary mind too much rope.

“Wealth, cleverness, and praise are not the same as excellence of character, Emma,” my mother used to tell me. To which my father would say under his breath, “But do also be clever, if you can.”

Requiem by Mozart and the second was a new composition by Gabriel Fauré called “Élégie in C Minor.”

“May took hold of my life and ran raggedly about London. Not only May. Before that. April. March! How does one ever manage to become master of their own fate? Is it even possible?” “Quietly,” Hawkes said. “Quietly,” I repeated, then, “Quietly?” I waited for him to expound. He did not. “Quietly,” I repeated to myself. And we struck out for Stonecrop.

That every day should leave some part Free for a sabbath of the heart.

A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.

I admit now it felt like I’d been bruised by the premeditation of his answer.

But one can love many places and still miss home.

His entire body tightened; a storm so strong it felt like holding on to a gale-force wind. He was fighting, fighting. He could not let go.

“It’s time to leave this room, to go outside,” I whispered. “There is space, there are long roads, your life is elsewhere. It’s time to go.”

Islington’s expression was even when he said, “Hawkes is going to rip Pierce’s anger out at the roots.”

“Did you think,” I asked, “that I was made of such thin metal that I would snap for the past of it all?”

Every minute of this day has crawled uphill. Bloody knees and scraped palms. Metaphorical but as painful as any physical injury.

How palpable the reality of life that something might crash through and change everything forever.

I sounded like a lunatic but too much had poured into the verbal river. It was rising over the banks and there was nothing for it. The fields would flood.

Everything in the future may change, but our present claims something stronger than change.” “What is that?” “Truth.

“I have,” he said, as if he were still out of breath. “I’ve just returned. Cake?” Then he lifted his right hand, which held a plate of fine bone china with a fat, tired slice of cake lying on its side. Thrusting it towards me, Hawkes waited for me to take it before he said, “Open your window. A scented breeze fit for Oberon’s court.” Then, “Don’t worry, Emma Lion.”