Ember Sappington > Recent Status Updates

“With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets-what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair—He had hold of her bag.”

“All at once he realized this: it was this:—she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.”

I relate to Mureth a bit too much

I can't walk this island at night, not once, without seeing my daughter looming up ahead, out of my reach. I couldn't give Grace a father or a home or even the assurance that I loved her. But Grinne, please God, can get all of it. Everything I've been saving and hoarding like a miserly woman in my heart, all these long years.

Ok, so I’m reading this domestic novel from 1857 and I’m having a silly goofy time so I thought I’d start listing the funniest conflicts from each chapter

1. Going to a Catholic Church (also thinking that there’s a 25 ¢ admission fee lol)
2. Going to a circus 😱
3. Getting drunk! 😵‍💫
4. Fixing a wayward boy by SENDING HIM TO THE NAVY. (Cue Navy by the Village People)

“No bodily intimacy ever existed between us; in its place was this contact of two minds closely intermingled.”

“We talk much of the dreams of youth. Too often we forget its scheming. That too is a form of dream, and there is no less extravagant than the others.”

“A handsome face was my conqueror.”

“Life was to me a horse to whose motion one yields, but only after having trained the animal to the utmost.”

“For him the stars were fiery points in the heavens, objects akin to the stones and slow-moving insects from which he also drew portents, constituent parts of a magic universe in which were combined the will of the gods, the influence of demons, and the lot apportioned to men.”

“The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.”

I prepare my sustenance myself, not out of suspicion, as is surmised, but because I thus procure for myself the luxury of being alone.

I grant that the most perfect repose is almost necessarily a complement to love, that profound rest reflected in two bodies. But what interests me is the specific mystery of sleep partaken for itself alone, the inevitable plunge risked each night by the naked man, solitary and unarmed, into an ocean where everything changes, the colors, the densities, and even the rhythm of breathing, and where we meet the dead.