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A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into its wake. From there, a paragraph amasses, and soon a page, and the book is on its way, finding a voice, calling itself into being. A book must start somewhere, and this one starts here.
It’s really important not to get upset because then the voices will get the upper hand and take over your mind. Things are needy. They take up space. They want attention,
Music or madness. It’s totally up to you.
Stories never start at the beginning, Benny. They differ from life in that regard. Life is lived from birth to death, from the beginning into an unknowable future. But stories are told in hindsight. Stories are life lived backward.
That’s what books are for, after all, to tell your stories, to hold them and keep them safe between our covers for as long as we’re able. We do our best to bring you pleasure and sustain your belief in the gravity of being human. We care about your feelings and believe in you completely.
As objects, books were sacred, and you built temples for us, and later, libraries in whose hushed and hallowed halls we resided as mirrors of your mind, keepers of your past, evidence of your boundless imaginations, and testimony to the infinitude of your dreams and desires. Why did you revere us so? Because you thought we had the power to save you from meaninglessness, from oblivion and even from death,
Your unquenchable desire, the fire that sparked us into being, is our unmaking. Your unbounded appetite for novelty has led you to design premature obsolescence into our bodies, so that even as our numbers increase, our life spans diminish.
being a target for your kid’s anger was just part of being a mother.
What makes a person want so much?
Children have a limited ability to understand a parent’s inner life, perceiving it through the lens of their own subjectivity and understanding only as much as impacts them. Children are remarkably obtuse that way, but not to worry.
Poetry is a problem of form and emptiness. Ze moment I put one word onto an empty page, I hef created a problem for myself. Ze poem that emerges is form, trying to find a solution to my problem.” He sighed. “In ze end, of course, there are no solutions. Only more problems, but this is a good thing. Without problems, there would be no poems.”
You know how a dream can be totally real-seeming, but when you try to put it into words, it just kind of dissolves and melts away?
“Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.”
impermanence is real. This is waking up to our true nature. Already broken. Knowing this, we can appreciate each thing as it is, and love each other as we are—completely, unconditionally, without expectation or disappointment. Life is even more beautiful this way, don’t you think?
Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it’s every person’s task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things, shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you.
Why was it that women could never work hard enough to quiet their nagging fear that they were not enough?
They needed to believe there was a right way and a wrong way—there had to be! Because if there was a right way, then perhaps they could find it, and if they found it and learned the rules, then all the pieces of their lives would fall into place and they would be happy. Such delusion.
When everything you think you own—your belongings, your life—can be swept away in an instant, you must ask yourself, What is real?
