41
" Your life is written in indelible ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed.
But if look closer, you notice the ink never really dries on any our experiences. They can change their meaning the longer you look at them.
Klexos.
There are ways of thinking about the past that aren't just nostalgia or regret. A kind of questioning that enriches an experience after the fact. To dwell on the past is to allow fresh context to trickle in over the years, and fill out the picture; to keep the memory alive, and not just as a caricature of itself. So you can look fairly at a painful experience, and call it by its name.
Time is the most powerful force in the universe. It can turn a giant into someone utterly human, just trying to make their way through. Or tell you how you really felt about someone, even if you couldn't at the time. It can put your childhood dreams in context with adult burdens or turn a universal consensus into an embarrassing fad. It can expose cracks in a relationship that once seemed perfect. Or keep a friendship going by thoughts alone, even if you'll never see them again. It can flip your greatest shame into the source of your greatest power, or turn a jolt of pride into something petty, done for the wrong reasons, or make what felt like the end of the world look like a natural part of life.
The past is still mostly a blank page, so we may be doomed to repeat it. But it's still worth looking into if it brings you closer to the truth.
Maybe it's not so bad to dwell in the past, and muddle in the memories, to stem the simplification of time, and put some craft back into it. Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas. And remember that a work of art is never finished, only abandoned. "
― The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
42
" When you got captured, I didn't know..." He trailed off, had to chug whiskey before he could continue. " If it'd be like..." " What?" " Like it was with Clotile." " Oh, Jackson, no. I was okay. I'm unharmed." " Didn't know if I'd get there too late," he said with a shudder. Then he crossed over to me, until we stood toe-to-toe. " Evie, if you ever get taken from me again, you better know that I'll be coming for you." He cupped my face with a bloodstained hand. " So you stay the hell alive! You don't do like Clotile, you doan take that way out. You and me can get through anything, just give me a chance." --his voice broke lower " just give me a chance to get to you." He buried his face in my hair, inhaling deeply. " There is nothing that can happen to you that we can't get past." ..." When you say we...?" He pulled back, gazing down at me, his eyes blazing. " I'm goan to lay it all out there for you. Laugh in my face--I don't care. But I'm goan to get this off my chest." " I won't laugh. I'm listening." " Evie, I've wanted you from the first time I saw you. Even when I hated you, I wanted you." He raked his fingers through his hair. " I got it bad, me." My heart felt like it'd stopped--so that I could hear him better." For as long as you've been looking down your nose at me, I've been craving you, an envie like I've never known." " I don't look down at you! I'm too busy looking up to you." ..." The corners of his lips curled for an instant before he grew serious again. " You asked me if I had that phone with your pictures, if I'd looked at it. Damn right, I did! I saw you playing with a dog at the beach, and doing a crazy-ass flip off a high dive, and making faces for the camera. I learned about you" - his voice grew hoarse -" and I wanted more of you. To see you every day." With a humourless laugh, he admitted, " After the Flash, I was constantly sourcing ways to charge a goddamned phone--that would never make a call." I murmured, " I didn't know...I couldn't be sure." " It's you for me, peekon. "
46
" Intercourse with resuscitated wife for particular number of days, superstitious act designed to insure safe operation of household machinery. Electricity mourns the absence of the energy from (wife) within the household’s walls by stalling its flow to the outlets. As such, an improvised friction need to take the place of electricity, to goad the natural currents back to their proper levels. This is achieved with the dead wife. She must be found, revived, and then penetrated until heat fills the room, until the toaster is shooting bread onto the floor, until she is smiling beneath you with black teeth and grabbing your bottom. Then the vacuum rides by and no one is pushing it, it is on full steam. Days flip past in chunks of fake light, and the intercourse is placed in the back of the mind. But it is always there, that moving into a static-ridden corpse that once spoke familiar messages in the morning when the sun was new. "
50
" She found Diana’s room. Diana was sitting in her bed using a remote control to idly flip through the channels on the wall-mounted TV.
“You,” Diana said by way of greeting.
“Me,” Astrid said.
“Can’t believe it,” Diana said. “All this time. And there’s still nothing on.”
Astrid laughed and lowered herself slowly into a chair. “You know how they say hospital food is so awful? Somehow I’m not having that reaction.”
“Tapioca beats rat,” Diana said.
“I never minded rat as much as that dog jerky we were getting for a while. The stuff Albert had them flavor with celery salt? That was the culinary low point for me.”
“Yeah, well, I had a lower low point,” Diana said, sounding angry. Or maybe not angry, maybe hurt.
Astrid put a hand on Diana’s arm, and Diana did not shake it off. "
― Michael Grant , Light (Gone, #6)
