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bare to the Lord of the place, all well, and clothed with immortality
“Who knows, thought Giovanni, whether this first meeting might have turned out differently after such a long separation. Perhaps we can meet again. I have two months free. You can’t draw any conclusions from a brief encounter. She may still love me and I may never return to the Fortezza. But the girl said, “What a shame! In three days I’m leaving with mamma and Giorgina. We’ll be away a few months, I think.” The mere idea made her burst with joy. “We’re going to Holland.” “To Holland?” The girl now launched into an account of the journey, waxing enthusiastic about the friends who would accompany her, her horses, the parties she had attended during carnival, her life, and her companions. She was oblivious of Drogo. She now felt completely at ease and seemed more beautiful. “A magnificent idea,” said Drogo, who felt a bitter knot closing his throat. “I’ve heard this is the best season in Holland. They say entire fields are blooming with tulips.”
― The Stronghold
― The Stronghold
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
―
―
“Changed?” replied Drogo. “No, absolutely not.” “You’re just saying that because you don’t find me as attractive as before. Tell the truth!” Was it really Maria speaking? Wasn’t she teasing him? Drogo listened to her words, hardly believing what she said. From one moment to the next he hoped she would drop that elegant smile, that sweet manner, and burst out laughing. “Of course! I find you most unattractive,” Giovanni would have replied in the good old days as he slid an arm around her waist, and she would have pressed against him. But now? It would’ve been absurd, a joke in poor taste. “I don’t think that at all,” said Drogo. “You’re exactly the same, I swear.”
― The Stronghold
― The Stronghold
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
“stranger, he wandered the city in search of old friends. He learned they were deeply engaged in business deals, major initiatives, political careers. They spoke to him of serious, important things—factories, railroads, hospitals. Someone invited him to dinner, someone else had gotten married, they had all gone their separate ways, and in four years they had grown distant. No matter how hard he tried (perhaps he himself was no longer capable), he couldn’t revive conversations from the past, the jokes, the turns of phrase. He wandered the city in search of old friends—and there were many—but in the end he found himself alone on a sidewalk with so many vacant hours before nightfall.”
― The Stronghold
― The Stronghold
JACOB’s 2025 Year in Books
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