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Maybe that’s what immortality is: remembering the tastes of your youth while feeding your children.
Maybe she skimmed it and got bored. It’s pretty dry up front, doesn’t quite grab you, which I’ve found is important. People have short attention spans these days.
On the cover, a crimson marlin leaps from the water above a school’s gold crest and the words Veritas Vitæ Magistra. “Truth is the teacher of life,” she whispers.
People want to be heard, especially when they’ve been misheard, misquoted, and misunderstood. It’s why we relive old arguments in the shower until we’ve won.
“No. It’s not my story, but I’ll tell it if that’s what you want. It’s hers. And it’s a love story.”
Something was rising on the other side of the door. Something that dripped salt water and murmured like the sea.
“Yeah, and it can also start fires.”
Corey glanced at the TV, the lamps, the stereo, all unplugged.
Perhaps therapy made men uncomfortable. So much else about women did.
He liked the idea of new tissue healing old wounds. He hoped it was the same with her heart.
The sea had grown through her. Or maybe, he sensed, she’d grown into the sea.
“Truth is the teacher of life,” she whispered.
Was this how madness happened? First slowly and then all at once?
“Happy? Life isn’t Barney & Friends. I mean, who’s really happy? But she’s alive, right? That’s good enough.”
She was starting to understand the truth of it all: most friends didn’t grow older and closer. They simply grew apart.
That’s the power of memory, he supposes. Every one is unique, carved into neurons and strengthened through emotions and senses. It’s why so many adults never move past the music of their youth.
I like to think we’re the sum total of all those who helped us or hurt us or simply shared our life for a moment.
“Yes, precisely. They are brave. We must be fearless, as artists. We must confront what truly scares us.”
“Book of Revelations, hello.” She tapped her fingers on the counter. “The name of the fallen star is Wormwood.”
Symbiotic, yes, that was what they were. And maybe someday a little bit more.
Sometimes you just had to shut up and help out in this world.
It didn’t make much sense, but love never did.
A group only had the IQ of its dumbest member.
It had felt like a parade of tragedies that year. And then, like all news, it faded and the world moved on.
Front-load the human mind with the improbable and we reject it. Our mental defenses, they keep reality balanced.
“Yeah, but even a lie points the way to a truth. Or someone’s version of it.”
“The deepest bonds are elemental, built upon the friction of opposition. Water and fire, night and day, life and death. The transition from adolescence to adulthood lives at this nexus. It’s why you remember the chapped lips of your first kiss and the songs of the summer. Why true awe is your first trip to Fenway Park, with your friends. And why nothing ever tastes as delicious as that hotdog they bought you.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he said. “But you learn how to take a few of the hits.”
Would she ever know anyone as deeply as those she grew into adulthood with?
“Do you know what it’s like to have nothing? To be reduced to the barest scrap of existence? To eat desperation? Of course not. You and your friends, you whine about hardships, but you’ve never tasted misery. You’re a tourist to suffering.”
Yes, he has to admit, there is a charm to the desert, a desolate beauty. And perhaps an unspoken promise: the desert doesn’t care about your dreams or your deeds, your future or your past. The desert can devour you.
