More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
For the death of me, I couldn’t tell whether the place was intended to be heaven or hell.
To the extent that heaven above is isolation, it seems to be hell. To the extent that hell below is a crowd, it apparently is heaven. Maybe we are condemned to an endless nagging sense of discomfort balanced against comfort, satisfaction against the itch to escape.
I could climb down again if the urge ever overcame me, and it was a comfort to know I had the option.
I played God. Why not? I thought I was stepping into a vacancy.
I soaked biscuits until they swelled up and turned into watery mush, priceless meals, and dropped them here and there as if dispensing grace. From my hand came plenty.
an unending pageant of faceless shadows, an infinity that I could only dimly understand and that I could not possibly feed or help or move or alter or harm in any substantial way. My masquerade as a god felt more and more ridiculous.
I had fallen out of a chrysalis, fought through concrete and crowds, scaled heights, and achieved—what exactly? Ambiguity.
Maybe the exploration itself was a purpose.
The purpose of the strange, cold, utilitarian logic of the world? I didn’t know. But the cuts on my feet, finally beginning to heal? Little white scars that I could feel with a gentle distinctness against the pads of my fingers? Not only did I understand them, but they seemed to throw a glow of meaning around me. If walking was a joy instead of a wincing shuffle, then surely the world made that much more sense?
After all the slow ages of knowing them in darkness I had seen them in the light only briefly, but I still remembered what they looked like.
And I could remember especially the look on Henry’s face when the crowd separated us. It was the last I ever saw of him, that agony as if, at the moment the crowd had pulled us apart, the strands connecting my heart to his had physically ripped out his insides.
In my bones, in my gut, in my hands, in my cut-up feet, in every part of my body I wanted to find my Henry and my Rose. The feeling became like acid running through my veins, until I said to myself, let it be a disaster. Let it be a long search. Let them come up here, if I ever do find them, and fight with me. Let them bring all their quirks and annoyances that I know very well. Ten thousand other people are probably better suited to me and deserve the luxury above the muck, but it doesn’t matter. My friends have precedence.
There was that word again—purpose.
Now I am the strange mad creature of the ceiling. Obsessed and content with that obsession. To have a purpose is in itself an arrival.
When I do find you, the real you, one at a time or maybe both together, I’ll come swinging down on a rope, beating my chest, and then you will be amazed. Then we will be together again, almost like it was before, only better.
