"Did you like the movie, Dad?"
"Yeah. It was predictable, but those kinds of movies usually are."
"You'd think that the lady who fell in love with the married man would be smarter. I mean, any man who cheats on his wife isn't a man you should even consider being with. He's just going to do the same thing to her."
"Yeah, true. But love is strange. Love is illogical. If you apply logic to love, you lose everything."
Saturday, November 14
Monday, November 2
Looking For Alaska
Quotes from my favorite book.
------
She turned away from me and softly, maybe to herself, said, “Jesus, I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they’re gonna do. I’m just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.”
“Huh?”
“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."
“Sometimes I don’t get you,” I said.
She didn’t even glance at me. She just smiled towards the television and said,
“You never get me. That’s the whole point.”
------
“Auden,” she announced. “What were his last words?”
“Don’t know. Never heard of him.”
“Never heard of him? You poor, illiterate boy. Here, read this line.” I walked over and looked down at her index finger. “You shall love your crooked neighbour / With your crooked heart,” I read aloud. “Yeah, that’s pretty good,” I said.
“Pretty good? Sure, and bufriedos are pretty good. Sex is pretty fun. The sun is pretty hot. It says so much about love and brokenness - it’s perfect.”
------
And I was left to ask, did I help you toward a fate you didn’t want, Alaska? Or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?
------
He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realised: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us that would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless.
------
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
------
I would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.
------
She turned away from me and softly, maybe to herself, said, “Jesus, I’m not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they’re gonna do. I’m just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia.”
“Huh?”
“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."
“Sometimes I don’t get you,” I said.
She didn’t even glance at me. She just smiled towards the television and said,
“You never get me. That’s the whole point.”
------
“Auden,” she announced. “What were his last words?”
“Don’t know. Never heard of him.”
“Never heard of him? You poor, illiterate boy. Here, read this line.” I walked over and looked down at her index finger. “You shall love your crooked neighbour / With your crooked heart,” I read aloud. “Yeah, that’s pretty good,” I said.
“Pretty good? Sure, and bufriedos are pretty good. Sex is pretty fun. The sun is pretty hot. It says so much about love and brokenness - it’s perfect.”
------
And I was left to ask, did I help you toward a fate you didn’t want, Alaska? Or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?
------
He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realised: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us that would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless.
------
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
------
I would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)