There There

by Tommy Orange

Everything here is formed in relation to every other living and nonliving thing from the earth.

nothing is original, everything comes from something that came before, which was once nothing. Everything is new and doomed.

“We don’t have time, Nephew, time has us. It holds us in its mouth like an owl holds a field mouse. We shiver. We struggle for release, and then it pecks out our eyes and intestines for sustenance and we die the death of field mice.”

Does what we try most to avoid come after us because we paid too much attention to it with our worry?

We get used to everything to the point that we even get used to getting used to everything.

Bad luck or just bad shit happening to you in life can make you secretly superstitious, can make you want to take some control or take back some sense of control.

That’s what she loves about Motown, the way it asks you to carry sadness and heartbreak but dance while doing so.

turns out that who you spend time with ends up mattering more than what you do with that time.

“So? We all fuck up. It’s how we come back from it that matters.”

“That’s the way this whole thing is set up,” she said. “You’re not ever supposed to know. Not all the way. That’s what makes the whole thing work the way it does. We can’t know. That’s what makes us keep going.”