One Puzzling Afternoon

by Emily Critchley

People don’t like to take breaks anymore, I’ve noticed. They have to keep busy, as if something terrible will happen to them if they stop.

“History is always interpreted. It is the method of organizing what has been left behind, the truths and the speculation. It is what has happened, along with what has been said about what has happened.

Except,” here he held up his hand, “except that memory is unreliable. What we remember is not always what we saw.”

“To clarify, history is not just ‘the past.’ History is evidence of the past, but it is evidence that has gone through the wash, been spat out, regurgitated. It is the past pressed through cheesecloth, the essence of the past. Never, quite, the full story.”

I’ve still got all my marbles, even if they’re sometimes in the wrong order.

A dilemma, my father used to say, is nothing but two bad options.

You always think there’s so much time to do things, to see places, then you realize there’s hardly any time at all.