Home > Work > Migrations
1 " An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. "
― Charlotte McConaghy , Migrations
2 " I didn't want to leave the sea, so I snuck away without anyone noticing and spent 2 days on the stormy shore. This is where I belonged, where all the silver walls led. To salt and sea and wind pockets that could carry you away. "
3 " But in the night I slept and I dreamed of feathers in my lungs. So many I choked on them. I woke coughing and frightened and knew I had made a mistake. "
4 " I met a boy and he told me a story. There was a lady long ago who spent her life coughing up feathers. And one day when she was gnarled and gray, she stretched from a woman into a black bird. From then on dusk held her in its thrall and night's great yawning mouth swallowed her whole. He told me this and then the boy kissed me with vinegar lips from the chips he was eating and I decided that this was my favorite story of all. That I wanted to be a bird when I was gray. ... After that, how could I not run away with him. "
5 " We'd read while we balanced on the low rock walls that Seamus Heaney made famous in his poetry. A way to leave without really leaving. "
6 " Mein Leben war ein Vogelzug ohne Ziel, und das an sich ist schon ein Widerspruch. Ich breche auf, ohne Grund, nur um in Bewegung zu bleiben, und es bricht mir tausendfach, millionenfach das Herz. "
7 " It isn’t fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay. "
8 " A life's impact can be measured by what it gives and what it leaves behind, but it can also be measured by what it steals from the world. "
9 " We are, all of us, given such a brief moment of time together, it hardly seems fair. But it’s precious, and maybe it’s enough, and maybe it’s right that our bodies dissolve into the earth, giving our energy back to it, feeding the little creatures in the ground and giving nutrients to the soil, and maybe it’s right that our consciousness rests. The thought is peaceful. "
10 " It’s not life I’m tired of, with its astonishing ocean currents and layers of ice and all the delicate feathers that make up a wing. It’s myself. "
11 " But there won’t be any more journeys after this one, no more oceans explored. And maybe that’s why I am filled with calm. My life has been a migration without a destination, and that in itself is senseless. I leave for no reason, just to be moving, and it breaks my heart a thousand times, a million. "
12 " I don't know how to force the world into a shape I can manage. "
13 " I can't move to pull on my clothes except that somehow I do, and I can't stand on two feet except that somehow I do, and I can't walk, there's no way I can walk, except I do. I take step after step after step after step. "
14 " It’s impossible to control someone else’s capacity for forgiveness. "
15 " He said our lives mean nothing except as a cycle of regeneration, that we are incomprehensibly brief sparks, just as the animals are, that we are no more important than they are, no more worthy of life than any living creature. That in our self-importance, in our search for meaning, we have forgotten how to share the planet that gave us life. "
16 " Don’t, I whisper, inside. Don’t leave. But I know she must. It’s in her nature. "
17 " I never worked out how to be relied upon and also free. "
18 " How lonely it will be here, when it's just us. "
19 " What makes a young thing like you so tired of life? "
20 " We’re the only planet that has oceans. In all the known universe, we’re the only one sitting in the perfect spot for them, not too hot and not too cold, and it’s the only reason we’re alive, because it’s the ocean that creates the oxygen we need to breathe. "