Michael > Recent Status Updates

“I believe that the entrance-halls of buildings still retain the echo of footsteps of those who used to cross them and who have since vanished. Something continues to vibrate after they have gone, fading waves, but which can still be picked up if one listens carefully.”

“Remember what we were saying ten or twelve years ago: to go on writing or painting in the age of the movies is like insisting on perfecting the stagecoach when propeller planes already exist.”

“Before dawn, from the window of his room high above the mist and the slopes of the river like the moat of a castle, Jacinto Solana, just awakened by the passing of an interminable frieght train closed like the trains in the war, looked at a darkness turning silver and blue and ashen with the disciplined slowness that time has as it moves on clocks.

“…Dazai created a unified, many-chaptered narrative out of the confused and accidental events of his life and presented it as the life struggles of a strongly engaging character we call “Osamu,” as he himself did in some stories.”

“…But what good is it to make plans and think about the future? This evening, the clock in the hallway still rings the hours in crystalline tones. It watches over your childish slumber and protects you, like the lights, blinking, over there, near the Islands.”

“I’ve aged, haven’t I?”
He had. His face had narrowed and his skin had acquired a grayish cast. He had lost his beautiful blond hair.
“Not really,” I said.

“Erdosain had never offered his doomed flesh either a decent suit or a satisfaction that would reconcile it to life; he had done nothing for the pleasure of his own physical being, whereas he had permitted his spirit everything, even flights of fancy to countries as yet undiscovered by man’s machines.”

“Later she often repeated this procedure — of going away — and there’s a pattern to be read here, even on first sight: you leave what you know too well, leave what has ceased to be a challenge. Keep alive your curiosity about other ranges of experience, and ultimately about yourself in any new circumstances. Prefer the movement to the goal.”

“She began her walk home. In front of a flower shop in the center of the city a dozen people were standing and waiting silently for the short midnight flowering of a rare and brightly lit orchid. Silently Christa T. joined them. Then she walked home, comforted and much divided in her mind.”

And we walked right through town. Past the donut shop, past the miniature golf course, past the Chevron station. And he opened the bottle up and offered it to me. Before he even took a drink, he offered it to me first. And I took it and drank it and handed it back to him. And we just kept passing it back and forth like that as we walked until we drank the whole thing dry. And we never said a word the whole time.

“At lunch I try to eat by myself but there’s this daughter of the owner who comes around and always tries to engage me in conversation. She wears those English jodhpur kind of pants and sometimes carries a short whip that she taps very gently on her knee bone. I think she’s seen ‘National Velvet’ too many times.”

“He slid into the back seat of a grey Cadillac. Two Actors were talking feverishly about Greek Drama. They kept it up for miles. He kept staring silently at the back of the Driver’s black cowboy hat. There were three used toothpicks jammed into the hat band. One of those braided horsehair kind of hat bands like the convicts make.”

“Their eyes met at the same instant, Therese glancing up from a box she was opening, and the woman just turning her head so she looked directly at Therese. She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist. Her eyes were grey, colourless, yet dominant as light or fire, and, caught by them, Therese could not look away.”

“The doctor used to tell me that when he is about to die, a man becomes a music box playing the melody that best describes his life, his character, his aspirations. For some it’s a popular waltz; for others, a military march. Still another mews a gypsy air that trails off in a sob or a cry of panic.”