Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters

by Lucia Berlin

I slept on a Murphy bed. These were common then, beds that closed up inside a closet during the day. There were no rugs and very little furniture in this big house. Creaks. Echoes of wind in the trees, the splatter of rain against glass. Sobs in the bathroom.

They call it heartache because missing someone is an actual physical pain, in your blood and bones.

Put down mice poison and like this Kafka horrid dream the next few days I had to locate the stench—the rotting horrible stink—all over the bloody house—endless. 33 DEAD BLOATED MICE And there are at least 3 more somewhere. I can’t find them—I just sit and smell them and try and study and go out of my head.

Anyway, I feel like I have been very ill, and now I’m well and I’m tired and glad I’m well.

false positivism,

Subways are crazy because you come up into a new world and it is as if the place you have been isn’t there anymore at all—which is crazy but I don’t like it, it’s just like airplanes—you don’t go from one place to another, you simply eliminate the first place.

revolving domes of broken mirrors in the middle of the ballroom.

Here, I have spent 8 pages, all I should have said was that the proof and the praise that I thought was all I needed, doesn’t work. I am still not proud and I am not yet humble.

Takeoff is despegar, to unglue or unstick.

Buddy just turned radio on, playing Mexican music! David is fast asleep on my lap. Mark and Jingo are bored by now and terrible. 1 P.M. Guadalajara! Don’t you hate it when people tell you what’s going on while they’re writing? I never believe it.