The Orchard

by David Hopen

I don’t like when books resort to beating you over the head—Kafka excluded. It’s a sign of imaginative inadequacy on the part of the author. Not to mention the whole thing is too, I don’t know, voyeuristic for my liking.”

“All I’m saying,” he said drolly, “is that Modern Orthodoxy is quite the experiment.”

I sat a while longer, still stunned by the music, which for some reason made urgent the fact that I had no business being at this party, nor any real hope of being accepted by these strangers, unless I was providing a convenient favor: editing a paper, driving after a long night out. My headache returned, the air made heavy again. I was conscious suddenly of how alone I was, how alone I’d always been.

“Evan doesn’t care.”

He is so henry winter guy

We never reach permanent happiness, but we move steadily after its shadow, both physically and spiritually.

“Why’d you leave?” “It was unsatisfying. Intellectually, I loved academia—I still do—but on an emotional level it felt divorced from something larger.

Unsatisfying ... maybe its the word im looking to describe my feelings from university education

“Well, we love what makes us miserable. Someone once told me that.”

Guilt is pointless. Guilt is our way of legitimizing self-cruelty. It’s a basic human tendency to take pleasure in inflicting suffering, but seeing as we shouldn’t inflict suffering upon others—and seeing as we cannot harm the divine, even if we wanted to—what do we do? We turn on ourselves. We make ourselves suffer instead. We feel guilt.”

They love him, they fear him, but more than anything they want to be him.”

I wanted to comfort him but couldn’t think of anything effective. “I’m voting for you,” I finally said, when it was my turn. It felt like the right thing to do. He nodded, said nothing. I stepped into the booth, circled Sophia’s name and waited for Noah by his car.

“Beauty means nothing.” She rose, leaned forward drunkenly. “My beauty means nothing.”

“Divine madness,” Evan said. “That’s what I want.”