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The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. ~ Ernest Hemingway
But the thing people don’t realize is that the past is a living, breathing entity that exists apart from our wishes or best intentions. It’s not gone, and it’s certainly not invisible. Its fingerprints are smeared all over every moment of the present, its weight drags on every second of the future, its consequences echo down every hallway of our lives. We can no more rid ourselves of the past than we could stop the earth from spinning.
This kind of instant, thermonuclear attraction inevitably flames out as quickly as it appears, leaving broken hearts and bewilderment in its wake. It could never withstand the day-to-day drudgery of marriage, child-rearing, and real life. But in our case—with our real lives thousands of miles apart—it’s perfect. We’ll be perfect. Perfect strangers, unencumbered by all the bullshit that poisons desire.
“I’m almost old.” He shoots back with an irritated, “The finest bottle of wine is almost old. And by the way, that age bullshit is an American thing. In Europe, women are considered sexy at all ages. For that matter, in all shapes and sizes, too. Beauty and desirability have nothing to do with the number on your birth certificate or scale. The United States of Advertising has made everybody insecure about their looks.”
“Whatever bad thing happened to you, it hasn’t made you less beautiful. There’s beauty in darkness, too. It just takes a different kind of vision to see it.”
Life’s too short to mince words. Our existence is measured in minutes. Seconds. Heartbeats. Time is the most valuable commodity we have, because it can never be replenished. Once it’s gone…it’s gone forever. And so are we.”
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
It’s the clinging to emotion that causes suffering, she said. A wiser choice is to let it go and breathe.
…all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you. ~ Ernest Hemingway
“There exists a field, beyond all notions of right and wrong. I will meet you there.”
Scent is the key that unlocks our deepest memories. A single whiff of a certain perfume or freshly baked bread or even the type of mold that grew in the basement in our childhood home can transport us through time and space so we return there, to the secret place in our memory, inaccessible except through the magic of smell.
He whispers, “I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other. And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine.” Euphoric, I laugh softly. “You need to come up with some original lines, pal. Are your script writers on vacation? You can’t rely on Hemingway forever.”
“Drinking bourbon during the day doesn’t make you an alcoholic. It makes you a pirate.”
