42
" The four of them stand in the cockpit of the Misdemeanor as they motor from one town to another. They pass their house, which is not theirs any longer. Libby cuts the throttle, and they stall there in front of their sprawling memory. The four of them have come up for the closing; since all of them are owners, they all must be present to sign away this place. They have given most of the land to the Maine Preservation Society, and the house, they have sold to a family who promises not to tear the whole thing down, though they know that is a lie. The oak is yellow and peeks from behind the house. The glossy white windows of the great room look down upon them. It is cold and they all wear their foul-weather gear, bright-yellow slickers, except Gwen, in a red poncho to accommodate the swell of her belly. Libby keeps one hand on the tiller and the other she slips into Tom’s hand. He gives it a squeeze and then puts his arm around her. Danny moves from the stern to stand between Tom and Gwen. They all stand on the starboard side looking at the house. Libby and Tom, then Danny, his hand resting on his brother’s shoulder, and Gwen next to him, her arms crossed over her protruding belly, her hair long and dark hanging down her back. She is no longer a beacon, but a buoy in her poncho, red right returning. The sky is gray and low and promises a choppy ferry ride to the mainland, but there in the safe haven of the harbor it is calm and windless, and the house isn’t empty, but expectant. The flat water, dark green now, lies empty, the float pulled out the month before. Going from town dock to town dock, there is no need for a tender. There is no way for them to come ashore, even if they wanted to. A house like this is not supposed to exist now. It comes from another era. It is a ghost, like the schooners that sail through the thoroughfare every summer. It is an aberration, a figment. It is their great shingled memory. "
― , North Haven
45
" No, not of course at all—it is really all hocus-pocus. The days lengthen in the winter-time, and when the longest comes, the twenty-first of June, the beginning of summer, they begin to go downhill again, toward winter. You call that ‘of course’; but if one once loses hold of the fact that it is of course, it is quite frightening, you feel like hanging on to something. It seems like a practical joke—that spring begins at the beginning of winter, and autumn at the beginning of summer. You feel you’re being fooled, led about in a circle, with your eye fixed on something that turns out to be a moving point. A moving point in a circle. For the circle consists of nothing but such transitional points without any extent whatever; the curvature is incommensurable, there is no duration of motion, and eternity turns out to be not ‘straight ahead’ but ‘merry-go-round’! "
― Thomas Mann , The Magic Mountain
48
" Stick your dick in’?” I asked, my brows probably touching. “Did you actually just say that?”
“Make love. I meant make love … of course. I would never just stick my dick in you. I would make mad, passionate love to this sweet, sweet body of yours for days, no, weeks. It would be beautiful, pumpkin. There’d be little angels, and birdies, and you know … all just hanging around, watching. Perverts. "
― Kylie Scott , Play (Stage Dive, #2)
54
" I glanced over and saw Wyatt glaring at me. Journey’s “Lovin’ Touchin’, Squeezin’” was playing on the radio.
“What?” I asked.
“You secretly hate me, don’t you.” He gestured toward the radio. “You can’t stand the thought of me taking a much needed nap and leaving you to drive without conversation. You’re torturing me with this sappy stuff.”
“It’s Journey. I love this song.”
Wyatt mumbled something under his breath, picked up the CD case, and started looking through it. He paused with a choked noise, his eyes growing huge.
“You’re joking, Sam. Justin Bieber? What are you, a twelve-year old girl?”
There’s gonna be one less lonely girl, I sang in my head. That was a great song. How could he not like that song? Still, I squirmed a bit in embarrassment.
“A twelve-year old girl gave me that CD,” I lied. “For my birthday.”
Wyatt snorted. “It’s a good thing you’re a terrible liar. Otherwise, I’d be horrified at the thought that a demon has been hanging out with a bunch of giggling pre-teens.”
He continued to thumb through the CDs. “Air Supply Greatest Hits? No, no, I’m wrong here. It’s an Air Supply cover band in Spanish.” He waved the offending CD in my face. “Sam, what on earth are you thinking? How did you even get this thing?”
“Some tenant left it behind,” I told him. “We evicted him, and there were all these CDs. Most were in Spanish, but I’ve got a Barry Manilow in there, too. That one’s in English.”
Wyatt looked at me a moment, and with the fastest movement I’ve ever seen, rolled down the window and tossed the case of CDs out onto the highway. It barely hit the road before a semi plowed over it.
I was pissed. “You asshole. I liked those CDs. I don’t come over to your house and trash your video games, or drive over your controllers. If you think that will make me listen to that
Dubstep crap for the next two hours, then you better fucking think again.”
“I’m sorry Sam, but it’s past time for a musical intervention here. You can’t keep listening to this stuff. It wasn’t even remotely good when it was popular, and it certainly hasn’t gained anything over time. You need to pull yourself together and try to expand your musical interests a bit. You’re on a downward spiral, and if you keep this up, you’ll find yourself friendless, living in a box in a back alley, stinking of your own excrement, and covered in track marks.”
I looked at him in surprise. I had no idea Air Supply led to lack of bowel control and hard core drug usage. I wondered if it was something subliminal, a kind of compulsion programmed into the lyrics. Was Russell Hitchcock a sorcerer? He didn’t look that menacing to me, but sorcerers were pretty sneaky. Even so, I was sure Justin Bieber was okay. As soon as we hit a rest stop, I was ordering a replacement from my iPhone. "
― Debra Dunbar , Satan's Sword (Imp, #2)
55
" I remember one bobcat they had in here - now bobcats are an endangered species in this neck of the woods - they'd caught it somewhere and they must have put that cat through a dozen rounds of burn experiments before they finally determined that it was utterly useless to them. Like an empty beer can. And then you know what they did to it? Claudius was late for a lunch date so rather thanput the destroyed but still breathing animal to sleep, he picked it up by its hind legs and simply smashed its head against a wall repeatedly until it was dead. How can I forget it: I was the one told to clean up the mess. The head dented in. The eyes slowly closing. The once proud claws hanging down, stunned and lifeless, the utter senselessness of it all, and the hate, a hatred that was consummated in me which is as dangerous a hormone, or chemical, or portion of the brain, as any neutron bomb. Except that I didnt know how to explode. I was like a computer without a keyboard, a bird without wings. Roaring inside. I wanted to kill that man. To do unto others what they had done unto me. I was that bobcat, you better believe it. "
― , Rage and Reason
56
" The individual parts played by other instrumentalists-- crickets or earthworms, for instance-- may not have the sound of music by themselves, but we hear them out of context. If we could listen to them all at once, fully orchestrated, in their immense ensemble, we might become aware of the counterpoint, the balance of tones and timbres and harmonics, the sonorities. The recorded songs of the humpback whale, filled with tensions and resolutions, ambiguities and allusions, incomplete, can be listened to as a a part of music, like an isolated section of an orchestra. If we had better hearing, we could discern the descants of sea birds, the rhythmic tympani of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonies of midges hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet. "
― Lewis Thomas , The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher