P. Kirby > Recent Status Updates

Made the mistake of not re-reading the first book, so spent the first few hundred pages going, "Huh? Why are they doing this?"

It's a credit to Abercrombie that despite me having few memories of the first book, this one is immensely readable. Kind of meandering at times, but really engaging.

Ninefingers's and Ferro's love story, ha, is particularly fun.

"Serenade" is only like 20 measures long and slow, andante, and it's kicking my ass. There's this jump from a simple D-major chord to G-E-F# chord (whatever its called) that hours of practice later, I'm still fumbling. UGH!

"I love my sister, and until I die, I'll never stop missing her. But I want to be good to the people I haven't lost yet. I want to live, with you."

"June O'Donnell, I like that you know you can't fix the thing that hurts in me. And that you understand it gets better but you never stop missing people. I like that you know no human being will ever make it okay that you lost another one."

You can clutch one terrible Moment or experience all the rest. Your life is slipping past in brilliant little bits, and I know it feels as though you're holding on to him, as though opening your hands is letting him slip away." [...] "But when Moments pass and crumble, they become seeds. They grow into new trees. And I promise you, he'll be in every new leaf. He will never be far from you."

"Letting go is not forgetting. It's opening you eyes to the good that grew from the bad, the life that blooms from decay."

Abe studies her, momentarily forgetting the breeze, the water, their nakedness. He reaches out, and she does too. They look at their entwined fingers with breathless wonder, as if watching the earth's foundations being laid.

"Marta Griggs didn't believe me," I told him. "Even though her family believes there used to be a magic garden and a snake slithered into it and spread evil."

His hands stop tracing idle circles on my back. "I think once you've felt grief, it's hard not to catch someone else's. Especially when the person grieving is someone you love."

It's almost a relief. Because if all of us are going to someday lose the people we love most, or be lost by them, then what is there to do but live?

"And then here is this person looking at you and dramatically murmuring, I'm sorry for your loss. And you have to look at them and hope your eyes aren't saying, Don't be too sorry. You're next."

"But not because I hate being pitied. I do, but it's more than that. When people pity you, it's like they honestly don't realize the exact same thing's coming for them. And then I feel embarrassed and uncomfortable and have to pity them, because, like do you not realize it's always someone's turn?"

"You know what my least favorite thing is?"
"What's that, Jack?"
"When people find out you've lost someone and they get uncomfortable and embarrassed and pitying and weird."
"It's the worst."

If Jack II grew up to be a collapsed heart, a back hole, his mother was a meteor hurling through space: beautiful but burning out, screaming but kept silent by the vacuum.

When Bekah died--I don't know. Writing was the only thing I could focus on. When I wasn't doing it, every minute was terrible, and all I could do was wait for enough time to pass that I could go back to sleep. When I wrote, things sort of came into focus for a while, and I could find pieces of my sister; I knew what I wanted to say, and I could pass the time saying it.

This is how grief works. It watches; it waits; it hollows you out, again and again.

So far I'm kind of loving this. Which means it'll either devolve into absolute shite or be wonderful. Hoping for the latter.

"There's nothing another human being can say that makes it better or eases the pain. Sorry is a white flag, an I can't help you."

While some sections of this have been cathartic for me, it's hard to get past just how privileged Didion is. It's not her fault, but...she's too rich and well-traveled.

More slurs. (Hammer ons, pull offs.)

D-major. Already encountered the fingerings for D-major in a book of Carulli studies, but this introduces the chords.

I confess I like that Maria isn't mother of the year, and that point of fact, she's sort of bored with her children. Tired of the fallacy that motherhood turns every woman into MOTHER, the ultimate icon of nurturing, blah-blah-blah.

Given my current state, this could either be cathartic or a trigger-fest.

Celia felt herself blushing. It was always embarrassing when someone you knew performed in front of you, in a room, and not upon a stage.

"He doesn't really love me," she said: "he only loves the idea he once had of me. He tries to keep it in front of him always, like the memory of a dead person...."

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