Bitter Water Opera Quotes

“It was my limerence for other people that afflicted me, my limerence to be in the future, limerence for the so-called beauty of the past, limerence for other places I had no business living in, limerence for stew when I was eating pie, a limerence so strong that I was always in a world that didn’t even exist.”
― Nicolette Polek, Bitter Water Opera

“Only a small part of the preservation work was keeping her together through artifacts. Her paintings, costumes, compositions, letters. The crown jewel- the opera house. All of it, her life in objects, could be gone in a moment, through flood or fire, and they knew that well. Time wins over time.
What survives materiality is a story.”
― Nicolette Polek, Bitter Water Opera

“Before deciding where to put the pear tree, I did what I so often watched my mother do. In the morning she'd look at where the sun was and sketch the shadows, the same in the afternoon, the same in the late afternoon, evening. She had a notebook of shadow maps, of different rooms and views of the yard. Imprints, traces, impressions, marks, and stains of things. A tree's shadow moved from left to right. The shadow of a ceiling fan was a long pressed daisy. Footprints and furniture silhouettes. My mother could tell the time based on any room and its shadows within a ten-minute window of accuracy. Shadow-mapping felt to her like observing the unknown side of visible things. Forgotten until focused on, and meaningless unless questioned, like a watermark, a trail of cologne, or kicked-up road dust behind a lone driver. As mothers often do, she saw something I couldn't yet see. I stood outside with the bright sun behind me and copied my form. It was the reaching fleeting version of me.”
― Nicolette Polek, Bitter Water Opera

“There was a limerence for another world that destroyed all joy. I began calling it "limes" as some lovely-dumb nickname. Some days I was "heavy with limes," and more and more days I had none, or one that I could easily throw into the pond.”
― Nicolette Polek, Bitter Water Opera