Status Updates From Cedilla (John Cromer, #2)

Low energy Noel. Impossible entrances. Library. Pee plant. Making yogurt. Homeopathy. Groped before the Voodoo Lily. Partying. Marijuana. Day of Inaction. Storming the admin. Mescaline adventure. Weeping Willow, birth of aspirin. Pub regular. Alcoholic hostage. Gay group meeting.

"Then one day she happened to pass when I had already accepted assistance from someone else. Her face became fixed and she went rigid with disapproval. (...)But after that, although I saw her passing by on a regular basis, she never offered assistance again, and this is something I have never understood, the process by which the helpful impulse shades into a sense of ownership."

"In my history I have noticed that on the threshold of a new stage of life there is often a figure of two-faced welcome, half ushering me in, half keeping me at bay."
I will have to reflect on my life to try to recall any similar threshold figures.
Since I last updated here, John wrote a one woman show for himself to play Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of "Christian Science". And he has now traveled to India.

Great scene after the brothers lose their pet dog- (something similar happened after we lost our Daphne in 2012):
"
That night after Peter had got into bed, I heard dog contentment breathing in the room. That unmistakable grumbling sigh. "Is that you Peter?" I whispered. "No Jay," he whispered back from his bed. "Isn't it you?"
"

"[Maria] inhaled the smoke through her mouth and expelled it thoughtfully through her nose. Dad smoked as if it were a military drill, a form of exercise for the lungs, while Mom smoked duMauriers with her nerves (...) It was easy to think that Maria drew the smoke directly into her brain."

"I was treated as sentient luggage. It was glorious."

So lovely, I could post a quote from every page.

So delightful I think I might want to set it down every 50 pages or so. There's no way the author can sustain this and I want to stretch it out. I read PILCROW way too fast and I want to enjoy this one properly.

"As Rabelais describes the virtuous dead in the Elysian Fields they're up to the arseholes in bliss, since they enjoy the great privilege of wiping themselves on the necks of live white geese, whose softness (...) 'imparts a sensible heat to the nockhole'. Something to look forward to, unless you're a goose."