inevitable wandering

The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt)        “Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’”

There had been nights in the desert where I was so sick with laughter, convulsed and doubled over with aching stomach for hours on end, I would happily have thrown myself in front of a car to make it stop.

drowsy air-conditioned afternoons, lazy and drunk, blinds closed against the glare, stolen candies and apples, the same mournful old radiohead over and over: for a minute i lost myself, i lost myself… […]

exhausted sleep, spine to spine in dirty sheets that smelled of cigarette ash and dog, popchik belly-up and snoring, russian-language novels. […]

fucked-up nights, grappling around half-dressed, weak light sliding in from the bathroom and everything haloed and unstable without my glasses: hands on each other, rough and fast. […]

When we are strongest– who draws back? Most merry– who falls down laughing? When we are very bad,– what can they do to us?

And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.

I faked a yawn and tried to roll away, but instead he sighted and pulled me closer, with a sleepy, snuggling notion.

books read in 2015:   T H E   G O L D F I N C H   by Donna Tartt

The painting, the magic and aliveness of it, was like that odd airy moment of the snow falling, greenish light and flakes whirling in the cameras, where you no longer cared about the game, who won or lost, but just wanted to drink in that speechless windswept moment. When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a flickering sun-struck instant that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch’s ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature—fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.