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“Don’t you have a flashlight?” he asked. Of course I had one, but I wouldn’t be able to tell where it was until morning. It’s a feature of flashlights that they’re only visible in the daytime.
It had freed him from the mess that was his life. And it had freed other living Creatures from him. Oh yes, suddenly I realized what a good thing death can be, how just and fair, like a disinfectant, or a vacuum cleaner.
Perhaps there were some angels watching over him; sometimes they turn up on the wrong side.
To my mind, Death should be followed by the annihilation of matter. That would be the best solution for the body. Like this, annihilated bodies would go straight back into the black holes whence they came. The Souls would travel at the speed of light into the light. If such a thing as the Soul exists.
I have always regarded the feet as the most intimate and personal part of our bodies, and not the genitals, not the heart, or even the brain, organs of no great significance that are too highly valued. It is in the feet that all knowledge of Mankind lies hidden; the body sends them a weighty sense of who we really are and how we relate to the earth. It’s in the touch of the earth, at its point of contact with the body that the whole mystery is located—the fact that we’re built of elements of matter, while also being alien to it, separated from it. The feet—those are our plugs into the socket.
it crossed my mind that the thing that leaves the body sucks a piece of the world after it, and no matter how good or bad it was, how guilty or blameless, it leaves behind a great big void.
He had caught the Deer in a snare, killed her, then butchered, roasted and eaten her body. One Creature had devoured another, in the silence and stillness of the Night. Nobody had protested, no thunderbolt had struck. And yet Punishment had come upon the devil, though no one’s hand had guided death.
Anger makes the mind clear and incisive, able to see more. It sweeps up the other emotions and takes control of the body. Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.
For the best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding.
Sometimes, when a Person feels Anger, everything seems simple and obvious. Anger puts things in order and shows you the world in a nutshell; Anger restores the gift of Clarity of Vision, which it’s hard to attain in any other state.
We sang like that for about an hour, the same thing over and over, until the words ceased to have any meaning, as if they were pebbles in the sea, tossed eternally by the waves, until they were round and as alike as two grains of sand. It undoubtedly gave us respite, and the corpse
In a way, people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind—that such a Person is not him- or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality—its inexpressibility.
Sometimes I think that only the sick are truly healthy.
Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges.
Irresistibly—that’s a beautiful, powerful word; when we use it, we shouldn’t really need to provide any further explanation.
I’d love to know how a Bat sees the world; just once I’d like to fly across the Plateau in its body. How do we all look down here, as perceived by its senses? Like shadows? Like bundles of shudders, sources of noise?
saturnine
It’s clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest.
tenebrism.
And I realized there were lots of us in the garden and the forest, our faces covered in hair. Strange beasts. And our Bats had settled in the tree and were singing. Their shrill, vibrating voices were jostling microscopic particles of mist, so the Night around us was softly starting to jingle, summoning all the Creatures to nocturnal worship.
nocturnal storm,
