At first I didn’t see what the trouble was. It wasn’t a mirror at all, but a picture.
While he kissed me I kept my eyes open and tried to memorize the spacing of the house lights so I would never forget them.
The shadow in my mind lengthened with the night blotting out our half of the world, and beyond it; the whole globe seemed sunk in darkness.
My drink was wet and depressing. Each time I took another sip it tasted more and more like dead water.
They were all smiling with bright, artificial smiles.
He always arranged our weekends so we’d never regret wasting our time in any way.
She had just smiled and said what a merciful thing it was for him he had died, because if he had lived he would have been crippled and an invalid for life, and he couldn’t have stood that, he would rather have died than had that happen.
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God, Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility. Fumey, spiritous mists inhabit this place Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
Blameless as daylight I stood looking At.
But these seniors said most boys were like that and you couldn’t honestly accuse them of anything until you were at least pinned or engaged to be married.
Once they’d even brought the minister of the Unitarian church, whom I’d never really liked at all. He was terribly nervous the whole time, and I could tell he thought I was crazy as a loon, because I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn’t believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died.
I gathered all my news of Joan into a little, bitter heap, though I received it with surface gladness. Joan was the beaming double of my old best self, specially designed to follow and torment me.
I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was.
But then, she was practical and a sociology major.
The city had faded my tan, though. I looked yellow as a Chinaman. Ordinarily, I would have been nervous about my dress and my odd colour, but being with Doreen made me forget my worries. I felt wise and cynical as all hell.
I would rather be a mediocre writer than a bad actress.
We all live in our own dream-worlds and make and re-make our own personal realities with tender and loving care.
Being with Jody and Mark and Cal was beginning to weigh on my nerves, like a dull wooden block on the strings of a piano. I was afraid that at any moment my control would snap, and I would start babbling about how I couldn’t read and couldn’t write and how I must be just about the only person who had stayed awake for a solid month without dropping dead of exhaustion.
What a hotch-potch the world was!
Even in the days I feel the worst, I feel glad to be alive. To be a part of this journey called life. To be one of the lucky 7 billion. Why was I chosen to be here? I must have a meaning, right? There’s a big picture already painted of my life, my legacy, my happiness. I just have to trust in it.