Monday, March 22, 2010

The Hours

"How often since then has she wondered what might have happened if she'd tried to remain with him; if she'd returned Richards kiss on the corner of Bleeker and McDougal, gone off somewhere (where?) with him, never bought the packet of incense or the alpaca coat with rose-shaped buttons. Couldn't they have discovered something larger and stranger than what they've got. It is impossible not to imagine that other future, that rejected future, as taking place in Italy or France, among big sunny rooms and gardens; as being full of infidelities and great battles; as a vast and enduring romance laid over friendship so searing and profound it would accompany them to the grave and possibly even beyond. She could, she thinks, have entered another world. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself. 

 Or then again maybe not, Clarissa tells herself. That's who I was. This is who I am--a decent woman with a good apartment, with a stable and affectionate marriage, giving a party. Venture too far for love, she tells herself, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port. 

 Still, there is this sense of missed opportunity. Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe its as simple as that. Richard was the person Clarissa loved at her most optimistic moment. Richard had stood beside her at the ponds edge at dusk, wearing cut-off jeans and rubber sandals. Richard had called her Mrs. Dalloway, and they had kissed. His mouth had opened to hers; (exciting and utterly familiar, she'd never forget it) had worked its way shyly inside until she met its own. They'd kissed and walked around the pond together. 

 It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk. The anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and its perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other." 

— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

  

Condition

"I'd love to, she finally said,"on one condition." 

I steadied myself, hoping it wasn't something too awful. 

"Yes?" 

"You have to promise that you won't fall in love with me." 

I knew she was kidding me by the way she laughed, and I couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. 

Sometimes, I had to admit, Jamie had a pretty good sense of humor. 

I smiled and gave her my word."

 
 

 
 

City Of Ashes

"Jace: You could have fooled me. Everytime I called you, Luke said you were sick. I figured you were avoiding me. Again. 

 Clary: I wasn't. I did want to talk to you. I've been thinking about you all the time. 

 Jace: I've been thinking about you, too. 

 Clary: I really was sick. I swear. I almost died back there on the ship, you know. 

 Jace: I know. Everytime you almost die, I almost die myself." 

 
 

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Why

Why is it so hard to dress your thoughts with words. is it my own quench of making it sound attractive or I am perennially puzzled

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Back!

And I'm BACK IN THE GAME!