Like Life - Lorrie Moore

Joy

The world was lovely, really, but it was tricky, and peevish with the small things, like a god who didn't get out much.

You are Ugly, Too

Her students were by and large good Midwesterners, spacey with estrogen from large quantities of meat and cheese. They shared their parents' suburban values; their parents had given them things, things, things. They were complacent. They had been purchased. they were armed with a healthy vagueness about anything historical or geographic. They seemed actually to know very little about anything, but they were extremely good-natured about it.

She had to learn not to be afraid of a man, the way, in your childhood, you learned not to be afraid of an earthworm or a bug. Often, when she spoke to men at parties, she rushed things in her mind. As the man politely blathered on, she would fall in love, marry, then find herself in a bitter custody battle with him for the kids and hoping for a reconciliation, so that despite all his betrayals she might no longer despise him, and in the few minutes remaining, learn, perhaps, what his last name was and what he did for a living, though probably there was already too much history between them. She would nod, blush, turn away.

"I've just gotten out of a marriage that was full of bad dialogue."

"this friend of mine was this award-winning violinist. She traveled all over Europe and won competitions; she made records, she gave concerts, she got famous. But she had no social life. So one day she threw herself at the feet of this conductor she had a terrible crush on. He picked her up, scolded her gently, and sent her back to her hotel room. After that she came home from Europe. She went back to her old hometown, stopped playing the violin, and took up with a local boy. This was in Illinois. He took her to some Big Ten bar every night to drink with his buddies from the team. He used to say things like "Katrina here likes to play the violin," and then he'd pinch her cheek. When she once suggested that they go home, he said, 'What, you think you're too famous for a place like this? Well, let me tell you something. You may think you're famous, but you're not famous famous.' Two famouses. 'No one here's ever heard of you.' Then he went up and bought a round of drinks for everyone but her. She got her coat, went home, and shot a gun thought her head."
Earl was silent.
"That's the end of my love story," Said Zoe.

Places To Look For Your Mind

"I guess I'm not the right sort of person for him," he said. "I'm not a friendly man by nature. That's what he needs." Hane took off his glasses and cleaned them on the hem of his shirt.
"You're a stack of apologies," said Millie, kissing him on the cheek. "Here. Squash this can." She bent over and put a rinsed and label-less can near his shoe. Hane lifted his foot and came down on it with a bang.

The Jewish Hunter

She had a poem about marriage. It began, Marriage is the death you want to die, and in front of audiences she never read it with much conviction.

But it would be like going to heaven and not finding any of your friends there.

Like Life

Except for the pleasure of Rudy bringing her coffee - the gift of it - she hated this place. But you could live with a hate. She had. It was so powerful, it had manners; it moved to one side most of the time to let you pass. It was mere dislike that clouded and nagged and stepped in front of your spirit, like a child wanting something.

The Mandarins - Simone de Beauvoir

In a way, literature is true than life,” he said to himself. “On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that’s why it’s false. But it’s damned satisfying. In life, you’re constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality.

木星凌月

“不夠。”
“什麼？”
“不夠。”
“什麼？”
“你不夠愛我。”

她不應該說的。連愛那個字都還沒說完她已經看見他厭煩的臉，真的，瑪莉，真的，你和我開玩笑嗎？現在是說這個的時候嗎？

她看著他避開她的臉，像有人捏住了他雙眼中間。他一邊保持厭煩神情一邊假裝自己在細閱菜單 － 會有什麼，湯、沙拉、肉沙拉、魚沙拉、羊肉、牛肉、魚、布丁 － 還有什麼？質問、假裝、逃避、證據、激怒、爭吵、哭泣、離席。

“你們準備好了嗎？”
“我好了，瑪莉，你好了嗎？”

她看著他沒有說話。他一定覺得我要瘋了。她想。

“好，她不說話。”他回到菜單上，他還在假裝。“給我一個沙拉，還有......”

他會問：今天的魚怎麼樣。她想。

“...... 今天的魚怎麼樣？”
“很新鮮，剛從... 運來的。”

把菜單合起，露出樂觀堅定的表情。“很好，就要個魚吧。”

“那... 小姐要什麼？”

他們都在看她。她看著他。

“就給小姐和我一樣的吧。”

侍者鬆口氣，走了。他再次把眼神避開，假裝喝了口水。他真喝了口水，但他還是在假裝，假裝一切都與他無關。

她決定自己不要叫瑪莉了，她決定把文章的她都換成他，他會叫約翰，約翰不識相地在公眾場合和情人攤牌，約翰再也演不下去了。

真的，約翰，真的，你和我開玩笑嗎？現在是說這個的時候嗎？

“你瘋了，約翰。”
“...... 你在說什麼？”

你真的瘋了，約翰。你如果不是瘋了你就不會把自己名字換成約翰。你如果不是瘋了你就不會以為自己真的可以坐在他面前保持禮貌冷靜，在你看到那些對話後還要保持冷靜。如果你不是瘋了就不會以為他真的變了，然後你還坐在這裡，不是嗎？約翰？瑪莉？

Self-help - Lorrie Moore

How to Be an Other Woman

Love drains from you, takes with it much of your blood sugar and water weight.  You are like a house slowly losing its electricity, the fans slowing, the lights dimming and flickering; the clocks stop and go and stop.

What is Seized

Another morning, I heard my parents up early in the bathroom, my dad shaving, getting ready to leave for school.
"Look," he sighed in a loud whisper.  "I really can't say that I'll never leave you and the kids or that I'll never make love to another woman -"
"Why not?" asked my mother.  "Why can't you say that?"  Even her anger was gentle, ingenuous.
"Because I don't feel that way."
"But... can't you just say it anyway?"
At this I like to imagine that my parents met each other's gaze in the medicine cabinet mirror, suddenly grinning.  But later in the hospital bed, holding my hand and touching each of my nails slowly with her index finger, my mother said to me, "Your father.  He was in a dance.  And he just couldn't dance."  Earlier that year she had written me: "That is what is wrong with cold people.  Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist their every word and deed mirror that ice.  They never learn the beauty or value of gesture.  The emotional necessity.  For them, it is all honest before kindness, truth before art.  Love is art, not truth.  It's like painting scenery."

Forgiveness lives alone and far off down the road, but bitterness and art are close, gossipy neighbors, sharing the same clothesline, hanging out their things, getting their laundry confused.

How

And yet from time to time you will gaze at his face or his hands and want nothing but him.  You will feel passing waves of dependency, devotion, and sentimentality.  A week, a month, a year, and he has become your family.  Let's say your real mother is a witch.  Your father a warlock.  Your brothers twin hunchbacks of Notre Dame.  They all live in a cave together somewhere.

How to talk to your mother (Note)

You confuse lovers, mix up who had what scar, what car, what mother.

At a party when a woman tells you where she bought some wonderful pair of shoes, say that you believe shopping for clothes is like masturbation - everyone does it, but it isn't very interesting and therefore should be done alone, in an embarrassed fashion, and never be the topic of party conversation. The woman will tighten her lips and eyebrows and say, "Oh, I suppose you have something more fascinating to talk about." Grow clumsy and uneasy. Say, "No," and head for the ginger ale. Tell the person next to you that your inside feel sort of sinking and vinyl like a Claes Oldenburg toilet. They will say, "Oh?" and point out that the print on your dress is one of paisleys impregnating paisleys. Pour yourself more ginger ale.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? - Jeanette Winterson

She filled the phone box.  She was out of scale, larger than life.  She was like a fairy story where size is approximate and unstable.  She loomed up.  She expanded.

-
There are so many things that we can't say, because they are too painful.  We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way.  Stories are compensatory.  The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control.

When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening.  It is a version, but never the final one.  And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold.

When we write we offer the silence as much as the story.  Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

-
Pursuing happiness, and I did, and I still do, is not at all the same as being happy - which I think is fleeting, dependent on circumstances, and a bit bovine.

If the sun is shining, stand in it - yes, yes, yes.  Happy time are great, but happy times pass - they have to - because time passes.

The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centred.

What you are pursuing is meaning - a meaningful life.  there's the hap - the fate, the draw that is yours, and it isn't fixed, but changing the couse of the stream, or dealing new cards, whatever metaphor you want to use - that's going to take a lot of energy.  There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.

The pursuit isn't all or nothing - it's all AND nothing.  Like all Quest Stories.

-
And here is the shock - when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of commonsense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy.

You are unhappy.  Things get worse.

It is a time of mourning.  Loss.  Fear.  We bullet ourselves through with questions.  And then we feel shot and wounded.

And then all the cowards come out and say, 'See, I told you so.'

In fact, they told you nothing.

-
Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

-
At that moment a rival group of carol singers arrived at the front door - probably the Salvation Army, but Mrs W was having none of it.  She opened the front door and shouted, 'Jesus is here.  Go away.'

'That was a bit harsh, Mum.'

'I have had a lot to put up with," she said, looking meaningfully at me. 'I know the Bible tells us to turn the other cheek but there are only so many cheeks in a day.'

-
I was thinking about suicide because it had to be an option.  I had to be able to think about it and on good days I did so because it gave me back a sense of control - for one last time I would be in control.

-
Our madness-measure is always changing.  Probably we are less tolerant of madness now than at any period in history.  There is no place for it.  Crucially, there is no time for it.

Going mad takes time.   Getting sane takes time.

-
And I have loved most extravagantly where my love could not be returned in any sane and steady way.

-
But I did not know how to love.  If I could have faced that simple fact about myself, and the likelihood that someone with my story (my stories, both real and invented) would have big problems with love, then, then, what?

Listen, we are human beings.  Listen, we are inclined to love.  Love is there, but we need to be taught how.  we want to stand upright, we want to walk, but someone needs to hold our hand and balance us a bit, and guide us a bit, and scoop us up when we fall.

Listen, we fall.  Love is there but we have to learn it - and its shapes and its possibilities.  I taught myself to stand on my own two feet, but I could not teach myself how to love.

We have a capacity for language.  We have a capacity for love.  We need other people to release those capacities.

In my work I found a way to talk about love - and that was real.  I had not found a way to love.   That was changing.

-
'The things that I regret in my life are not errors of judgement but failures of feelings."

-
Happy endings are only a pause.  There are three kinds of big endings: Revenge.  Tragedy.  Forgiveness.  Revenge and Tragedy often happen together.  Forgiveness redeems the past.  Forgiveness unblocks the future.

The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes

I remember  a period in late adolescence when my mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness.  This is how it will be when I grow up.  I shall go there, do this, discover that, love her, and then her and her and her.  I shall live as people in novels live and have lived.  Which ones I was not sure, only that passion and danger, ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance.  However... who said that thing about 'the littleness of life that art exaggerates'?  There was a moment in my late twenties when I admitted that my adventurousness had long since petered out.  I would never do those things adolescence had dreamt about.  Instead, I mowed my lawn, I took holidays, I had my life.

I suppose I wanted to do something normal, or at least pretend that something was normal even if it wasn't. When you're young - when I was young - you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books.  You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality.  Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become.  You want them to tell you that things are OK.   And is there anything wrong with that?

"I'm still bald," I said.

What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully?  Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him?  Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised?  Who avoided being hurt and called it capacity for survival?  Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels?  One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain?  Well, there was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to avoid being hurt - and inflicted for precisely that reason.

認為

她看著他的笑臉，她不是不知道事情會怎樣。她想著她該如何對未來的孩子解釋她今日的決定，淡淡的說一句：當時我認為他是愛我的。或是：我認為他當時是愛我的。都是成立的，時態問題可以解決很多問題。她知道她的孩子仍會對她的說法嗤之以鼻，只因他人的錯誤一向愚蠢至極，尤其來自自己的母親。

《第六病房》Chekhov

在者，既然死亡是每個人正常而合理的結局，那又何必阻止他們死亡呢？如果一個小商人或文官多活五年或十年，這又有什麼益處呢？如果認為醫學的目標在於用藥品減輕痛苦，那就會引發一個問題：為什麼要減輕痛苦呢？受限，據說痛苦足以使人達到精神完美的境界；第二，人類要是真的學會用藥丸和藥水來減輕痛苦，那就會完全拋棄宗教和哲學，可是到現在為止，人類在宗教和哲學力不但找到了避免一切煩惱的報賬，甚至找到了幸福。普希金臨死以前受到極大的痛苦，可憐的海涅因為癱瘓而臥床好幾年；那麼安德烈或者馬特遼娜之流為什麼就不該生病呢？他們的生活本來就空虛，要是再沒有痛苦，那就會全然空虛，像變形蟲的生活一樣了。

安德烈被這些想法壓倒，心灰意懶，從此不再每天到醫院去了。

《1973年的彈珠玩具》村上春樹

「不寂寞嗎？」
「習慣了啊，訓練出來的。」
「什麼樣的訓練？」
我點上煙，把煙霧向她頭上五十公分的地方吹去。「我是生在一個奇怪的星星下的，也就是說啊，想要的東西不管是什麼都會到手，可是每次得到一樣東西的時候，卻踩到另一樣東西。你懂嗎？」
「有一點。」
「誰都不相信，不過這是真的。三年前我才注意到，而且心裡想再也不要去想得到什麼了。」
她搖搖頭。「因此，你就打算這樣過一輩子嘍？」
「大概吧。這樣就不會給任何人帶來麻煩。」
「如果你真的這樣想，」她說：「那只要活在鞋櫃裡就行了。」
真是高桿的意見。

《聆聽的國王》Italo Calvino

權杖要用右手拿，而且要筆直，如果讓權杖歪了就不好了，而且你也找不到地方放它，在御座旁就連放杯子、煙灰缸、電話的小桌子或層板或小板凳都沒有。御座孤零零地，矗立在高聳的階梯上方，如果有東西掉下去的話就會滾啊滾地再也找不到。要是不小心鬆手就更麻煩了，你得站起來，離開御座去把權杖撿回來，因為除了國王之外沒有人可以碰它，可是國王趴在地上去撿滾到某個傢具下的權杖實在很不好看，還有皇冠也要小心，只要你略一低頭，皇冠就很容易從頭頂掉落滾走。

你的前臂可以擱在扶手上，這樣太不會累：我說的是右手臂，握權杖的那隻手；至於左手呢，是自由的，可以抓癢，如果你需要的話。有時候貂毛披風會讓脖子覺得癢癢的，然後往下傳到背部，再傳到全身。坐墊的天鵝絨遇到溫度升高，會讓屁股跟大腿覺得刺刺的。你不需要猶豫，可以大剌剌地把手指伸向你覺得癢的地方那鍋，可以解開皮帶的金色環扣，可以拿掉圍脖、勳章、流蘇肩章。你是王，沒有人可以指責你，你已經夠倒楣的了。