31
" Everything he did, as long as you stayed in the village, whether shouting obscenities at passing children or sleeping in the cemetery, all would be remembered when they looked at you, they would say to themselves or to whomever they were with, It’s his father, you know, the crazy one, the drunk, and they couldn’t help but wonder what part of his madness had passed on to you, which part you had escaped. "
― Nick Flynn , Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
35
" They would know he was a burden, they could read the struggle in your face, they would watch as you passed and nod, knowing that around the next corner your father had fallen and pissed himself. And they would watch you watch him, note the days you simply kept walking, as if you didn't see, note the days you knelt beside him, tried to get him to rise, to prop him up. [...] you might get the sense that to leave the village would be [...] to become open to speculation that you'd abandoned your father to his fate, turned your back, left him to die. Taken and not given back. For if you are not responsible for your own father, who is? Who is going to pick him up off the ground if not you? "
― Nick Flynn , Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
36
" My father may not hear voices but he also has an impossible project, he’s also filled with a force larger than himself. In nearly every letter my father has sent me for the last twenty-five years he tells me his writing is going very, very well. His novel, such as it is, if it is at all, written in blackout and prison, is his ark, the thing that will save him, that will save the world. His single-mindedness impresses most, his fathomless belief in his own greatness, in his powers to transform a failed world, to make it whole again by a word, by a story. That if you stick with your vision long enough you will be redeemed. All this in the face of near-constant evidence to the contrary. The actual circumstances of his life—his alcoholism, the crimes he’s committed, his homelessness and decades of poverty—these are mere tests, and what is a faith not tested? Noah needed to gather nails, to sort the animals, to convince his sons. He planed his timber and laid out the ribs. His ark would be bigger than the temple. We all need to create the story that will make sense of our lives, to make sense of the daily tasks. Yet each night the doubts returned, howling through him. Without doubt there can be no faith. At daybreak Noah looked to the darkening sky and vowed to work faster. My father cannot die, he tells me, will not, until his work is completed. But is there a deadline inside him for when he must finish, a day, like Noah, when the rains begin? When the boat, finished or not, begins to rise from the cradle? "
― Nick Flynn , Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
