Michael > Recent Status Updates

"Certain stories are hard to bear, as are certain things we've lived or observed or fumbled or explored with great care... Our deepest memories are like infinite roots reflected in the brook, a simulacrum without end. And yet every story, like every life, lasts only so long."

"They'll never know that their presences soothes me, even though, at the same time, I feel a pain in the center of my chest, as if one of those pellets were lodged in my heart, and I nearly die from envy."

62 pages in, I've arrived at the part where Lahiri has reached deep down to my hardened heart, and spoken directly to it.

"At the same time I wonder what they know about the loneliness here. About identical days in our dilapidated cottage. The nights when the wind blows so hard the earth seems to shake, or when the sound of rain keeps me awake. The months we live alone among the hills, the horses, the insects, the birds that pass over the fields. What would they make of the harsh quiet that reigns here all winter."