Tobin Moffatt > Recent Status Updates

'The complaints of a full stomach! But there was no other kind of song.'

‘Itakura had opened a small studio where he specialized in “art photography.”’

‘. . . bones from the boneyard. Specimens, exhibits. . . . Like the exhibits he had heard about, set up around the empty camps as reminders. Or like the films advertised in posters, then appearing on television as well, between the sports report and Drink Coca-Cola. Curiosities among other curiosities, intended to shock and amaze, like skeletons hanging from ropes in the haunted houses of amusement parks.”

‘The explanation of his differentness . . . between him and everything else . . . His parents, his relatives, the fields and parks he walked through with his mother and father or with his classmates. It would appear like an omen, his differentness, whenever he put his trust in someone, or in anything other than himself, and he would awaken from that trust and see it was impossible.’

‘. . . I’d say, I’m leaving, then I’d go out and sit down on the doormat. You knew and after a little while you’d shout at me from inside, Come on-let’s kiss and make up, and I’d get to my feet, grip the doorknob and step inside. You’d be the same as when I left you, and you’d barely look up to see me wriggling my way back in.’

‘Then I’d head to my room and drop my plunder on the rug. It grew harder and harder to find any space to put the new souvenirs you’d bought without burying the old. They were from every country, every corner on earth, my room, trip after trip, becoming the world map of your absence.’

‘Then I’d head to my room and drop my plunder on the rug. It grew harder and harder to find any space to put the new souvenirs you’d bought without burying the old. They were from every country, every corner on earth, my room, trip after trip, becoming the world map of your absence.’

'. . . If you can't say something positive about humanity, then say something equivocal.'

‘I had been quietly listening to the successive stories of these three precious humans, but I was neither amused nor saddened by what I’d heard. I merely concluded that human beings were good for nothing except strenuous employment of their mouths for the purpose of whiling away their time in laughter at things which are not funny, and in the enjoyment of amusements which are not amusing.’

“The night of the full moon.
Here, one shadow is missing.”

'Humans seem to think that cows and horses are constructed from rejected human material, and that cats are constructed from cow pats and horse dung. Such thoughts, objectively regarded, are in very poor taste though they are no doubt not uncommon among teachers who, ignorant even of their ignorance, remain self-satisfied with their quaint puffed up ideas if their own unreal importance.'

‘Her moods changed so frequently that Yente never knew whether her mother, setting her down on her lap, would kiss and hug her or squeeze her shoulders painfully and shake her like a rag doll. So she preferred to just keep out of her way.”

'. . . On the other hand I felt pity for us all . . . Did they know about this? Had someone told her? Did they explain to people in their church that this was how things were going to be? That everything would be reversed, and the servants would become the lords, and the lords the servants? But would this in fact be just and good?'

'I am a cat. As yet I have no name.'

'Only in the evening, when mulled wine has warmed up his mind and body, does he sit down boldly to a fresh sheet of paper and write his thanks to her for coming to his "Firlejow Hermitage" and for bringing a little light into his monotonous gray life. He feels sure she'll understand "light" broadly and poetically.'

‘“Whoever hit upon the idea of fermenting cereals for vodka ought to be given a gold medal,” says Labecki, and taking the napkin out from under his chin, he gives the sign to retire to the library, where they will smoke their pipes, according to time-honoured custom.’

“Told by the DEAD,
supplemented by the AUTHOR,
drawing from a range of BOOKS,
and aided by IMAGINATION, the which
being the greatest natural GIFT of any person.
That the WISE might have it for
a record, that my compatriots REFLECT,
lay persons gain some UNDERSTANDING,
AND MELANCHOLY SOULS
OBTAIN SOME SLIGHT ENJOYMENT”

Here goes.