Bewilderment

by Richard Powers

Everything had happened in broad daylight, and against shamelessness, outrage was impotent.

voices pressed to their ears. The stillness confused Robin. Nobody else is protesting anything? Everyone in the state is perfectly happy with everything just the way it is?

Three in the morning, the woman I loved was weeping in the dark, and I wanted to tell her how badly she’d just hurt me. That’s the ruling story on this planet. We live suspended between love and ego.

Remember how Pawpaw just kept getting sicker and sicker and wouldn’t go to the doctor, and then he died? “I remember.” That’s what everybody’s doing.

I’d gone to the wrong school. He’d learned more in one summer, on his own, than he’d learned in a year of classroom. He’d discovered, on his own, what formal education tried to deny: Life wanted something from us. And time was running out.