The way you’re singing in your sleep The way you look before you leap The strange illusions that you keep You don’t know But I’m noticing The way your touch turns into arcs The way you slide into the dark The beating of my open heart You don’t know But I’m noticing And I’m moved, it’s so beautiful.
Christmas could begin. Magic could happen.
And I find myself saying, “It wasn’t really about her.” And finding it’s true. “What do you mean?” Norah asks. “It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love.” Norah.
I made the mistake of turning back to look at her one last time before I left the room. It was heartbreaking, really – she just sat there, stunned. She looked like she was waking up in a strange place – only she knew she hadn’t gone to sleep yet, and that this was actually life.
I started to write: Langston deserves to be sick. But I erased that and wrote, Okay. I’ll make him some.
Memo to Merle Haggard: Miracles really do happen. I.
And once I’m pretending that’s the truth, I figure it might as well be the truth.
We hadn’t vowed to write every day, and we hadn’t written every day. We hadn’t sworn to be true to each other, because there hadn’t been much to be true to.
Many years ago, he owned a neighborhood family grocery store on Avenue A in the East Village.
Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces.
What’s of more concern: If I don’t shut down my brain soon, my imagination will take off so far about what could be with this guy, that nothing will ever be able to just be.
I always made it my mission to like him, because somebody has to like the people no one else likes or the world would just be hopeless. And the best way to extract holiday cheer, I’ve found, is to spend time with the most curmudgeonly person you know, and their grump can’t help but force you into feeling good, because it gives you perspective and balance.
Anyone who’s lived in Manhattan all his life always feels torn whenever he leaves it. There’s the satisfaction of breaking free, for a time. But that’s balanced heavily by the feeling of leaving your whole life behind, and to see it from a distance.
She said those bell people are possibly religious freaks, and we are holiday-only lapsed Catholics who support homosexuality and a woman’s right to choose.
You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here’s a hint – ask yourself who wrote them.
I knew she was leaving. I knew we were never going to date long-distance. I knew that we wouldn’t have been able to be like this back when we were dating, so there was no use in regretting what hasn’t happened. I suspected that what happens in hotel rooms rarely lasts outside of them. I suspected that when something was a beginning and an ending at the same time, that meant it could only exist in the present.
But that’s what I love about punk music. It has a sense of humor about itself, doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It’s kickass funk with a heavy-metal edge, but with a conscience.” Good.
We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are underneath every part of this moment.
But the older you get, the more you realize that, yes, there are all these things that link you to the past, and you’re using the same words and singing the same songs that have always been there for you, but each time, things have shifted, and you have to deal with that shift. Because.
Of course you want to get to know her. But at the same time, you want to feel like you already know her. That you will know her instantly. Such a fairy tale.