Machel > Recent Status Updates

And then the day would have come at last: Eli, standing in the shallow ocean water off the spit staring East to where the future would arrive, when Denise would be torn from his life again. A few moments of still ocean. A gull crossing the sky. Then it would have come, in waves like light, to cover him. -ASG

You were wrong, the pictures would admonish, there was nothing there to love. -ASG

'He had always thought they were attached in some great, parasitic way that would allow no separation; but in the end he felt they were simply two great ships, lashed together to wait out the high waves of the ocean storm. It was simply a chore, and no terrible one, to cut the ropes at dawn.' -ASG 😭

You can either look around and long for the people who have left you, he thought, or you can forget them; you can turn to face the ones who stayed. ASG

Around them, the fog, that flock of doves, fluttered in the feeling Twilight. -ASG

'The cure for gravity is time.' -ASG 😭

He would sit in a plastic chair at dawn and bury his lover in stones.-ASG

'It seemed as though someone had taken the sun's lamp and flipped it over, shedding some harsh new light on the images that he thought he knew by heart: that night when the boy fell from the overlook, his time in England, the chill midnight of the comet hunt when she touched his shoulder, the humid evening on the island and all the other nights since then.' -ASG

'Denise simply wanted her husband to fade from her life without anger, a harmless local ghost whose manifestations would come quietly and sadly to her, glowing in a corner of her dark bedroom, talking the way he used to when she loved him.' ASG

I am loving this slow beautiful book on the tangled lives of these astronomers so much. Breathtaking. It's not meant to be a fast read folks.

What is this? Not friendship, not comfort. Too late, she understood this was the love you're supposed to fight for. - ASG

'There was nothing to be seen on the island now, and they smoked together from the stern, watching the stars come loose and drop into the sea.' -ASG

Careful with yourself. Gentle. The light coming through the trees threw barred shadows on the red ground. She rode through the stripes. -SM

'She stared out to the garden, feeling as if she had been slapped. The eerie thing was it seemed as if she were right where she belonged.' -SM

'The night before it had seemed as if she were sailing towards something warm and enveloping. Now she was being swept in a different direction. At least she was moving, she thought, in one direction or another.' -SM

Do you want to fly, Bartholomew

Rereading again. A favorite. 'Mom could make small things seem miraculous. That was her talent.'
'Mom liked to celebrate the little things.'

Deep into the drama of these characters, especially Denise & Eli. Love the time lapses, the return to the 🏝️ island. Fascinated and intriguing read. Looking forward to finishing this weekend.

They were lovers now. A blanket on a hillside, a clear veil of stars--something else besides the comment had been recovered. -ASG

Then, ashamed, she would hide the image in that room where no one else would ever find it.-ASG

*chesspiece of light

They made Love In an Old Stone Hut on a spit, sun flowing through the keyhole in a chest piece of light, only because it seemed the most natural thing to do. -ASG

His kiss had both woken her up and made her sleepy. A warm air blew around them in the dark. -SM

She felt the outline of herself begin to dissolve. -SM

You are something.
With you I am. Apparently.

The meteor storm was reaching its peak above them, sending sparks of light across the stars, shattering the dark bowl of the sky as if a God had dropped it. Only the children raised their heads to see. -ASG

'What Kathy loved were hidden, tiny madness in ordinary people.' -ASG

Oh look at us, they thought, standing on the bird - haunted beach before the dancing women, look how wonderful we are. -ASG