The Quiet Room

by Terry Miles

Were human beings really able to alter the course of their lives, or were we simply clay in the hands of fate?

“We’ve been sold a bill of goods. Work hard, play fair, and the American dream can be yours. What we were never told is that we’re simply coal for the rich to shovel into stoves in order to make themselves richer,”

“Human nature is greed and self-preservation,” Rowan continued. “Our most abundant resource is rampant stupidity. Do you honestly believe that the balance of power is going to substantially shift before humanity destroys itself over its inability to escape bigotry, racism, and the malignant ignorance of organized religion?”

K suggested that Emily think about her life with Pepper as a point in the center of a spiral. As the spiral grows, you end up looking at the center from farther and farther away; with each successive turn you’re another layer removed. That thing in the middle of the spiral will never disappear completely, but each additional layer will act as a kind of insulation, and it will eventually become much harder to see and feel the thing that you put in the middle of the spiral the way you did in the beginning.

Reality is a blanket, comfortable, but a lie. There’s always a loose thread, even if you can’t see it, and all you have to do is pull, just a little, and things will start to unravel. Will you find the answers that you seek? Or will you end up freezing to death beside a pile of thread?

She’d said that it was easy to get distracted if you tried to see everything all at once. What you needed to do was focus on something small, something right in front of your eyes, and it was only once you could see that small thing clearly that you’d be able to pull back and see the bigger picture.

just good old-fashioned American cultural decay and overblown opulent decadence.

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