Tara > Recent Status Updates

“Jack London, as I’m sure you know, was an author as well as a journalist,” I say. “He said that fiction is truer than fact. And that the best thing you could do with the facts was to make them look like fiction.”

“And that’s what you intend to do?”

“I’m going to try, at least,” I say. “It’s probably the only thing that gives any meaning.”

“Why are we made that way?Why fight for what’s already been lost?”
“Hm.The teachings of evolution maybe? If we just swallow our losses and allow the powers of evil free rain, the same thing will just happen over and over again.So we fight for a future in which we might, just possibly, get another chance”
“That’s very naïve”
“Naive, or optimistic. At least better than apathy and quiet resignation”

“What do you think of love?”

“What do I think of love? I think” —he scratches himself behind his ear— “that just occasionally, in between all the little loves, a big one comes along. But it doesn’t necessarily look all that big on the radar, so you need to have your wits about you. And that sometimes a little love can grow, given the right kind of care and nourishment.”
🥰

I nod. “We used to go drinking in Dinkytown. Me, him and Monica, the love of his life. Sometimes Monica brought along a friend who I think they hoped I would fall for. I never met anyone with such faith in the existence of deep and lasting love. I don’t mean a naïve faith, but well . . . an overwhelming conviction that it existed, despite the negative experiences of the majority.”
2/2

“You told me you remember Mike as happy,” says Bob. “ I never got to see that side of your cousin.”
1/2

“The city — and the world — needed naive optimists more than it needed resigned realists.”
❤️‍🩹

Liza wanted to give him a hug, but she resisted.
Bob looked at Liza standing there in the doorway. He wanted to give her a hug but resisted.
“Sleep well,” he said, amd with a short, clumsy bow he turned and headed back towards his car.
“You know what, Bob Oz?”
He stopped and turned. “What?”
“You’re not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You’re a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”
💗

“Kay closed her eyes. She needed someone else. She needed Bob Oz. But when she opened them again, it was still Olav Hansen standing there.”

“The strange thing was that later, when she looked back over her childhood, she couldn’t remember a time when she had ever felt closer to her father than she had that night, when they stood there, face-to-face, each with their own despair.”

“The chaos. The anarchy. Running footsteps. Sirens. That whole apparatus we trust in, that we believe can protect us, and save us, and the lives of those we love, is set in motion. But mixed in with the certainty that no matter what any of us do now, it’s already too late. My despair had finally become theirs too.”
💔

“Sometimes I wonder whether I’m really doing my customers a favor by stuffing the things they love. My job is to freeze memories, preserve them in solid form. There’s something unhealthy about it. You don’t move on. I can see it in my customers: they’re frozen themselves, they’re stuffed themselves, you know?”
-Mike

“Not that she needed a guy like him, she knew that well enough, she’d told him straight out. Maybe it was that simple, that you start wanting someone you don’t really want once you see she doesn’t want you. Like two losers underbidding each other until one ends up a winner.”
2/2

“ God knows why he kept thinking about a woman with a limp who showed no interest in him and gave him nothing but sarcastic comments. Was this the level he had sunk to? The other hand, there was something about the way she combine in a cute bullshit detector with black humor, and what he suspected was a warm heart. Of course, he could’ve been mistaken. But he wanted to know.”
1/2

“Not a shot was ever fired from it, but it made us that little bit safer, we slept better, we could go to school and get ourselves in education. And I know the statistics that show what guns can do to a society like Englewood in the long run. But I’m being honest, you don’t care a damn about the long run when your life is about surviving one night at a time.”
3/3

“And that’s a safety you middle-class liberals know nothing about because it’s just something you take for granted. But for three girls in Englewood, the gun was the great equalizer. It meant we didn’t have to be helpless victims and let someone terrorize us because he was physically stronger. It didn’t stop my mother from crying inside, but that gun changed our daily lives.”
2/3

“After the third time he broke in, beat my mother up and stole from us, she bought a gun. All she had to do was go to a store, fill out a few simple forms, and she left carrying weapon. I know you hate guns, but but I tell you, when my sister and me were sleeping in my mother‘s bed and she had that pistol underneath the pillow, we all felt safer.”
1/3

Thank You, Lord

…

Thank you, Lord.
I want to thank You, Lord
For life and all that that’s in it.
Thank You for the day
And for the hour and for the minute.
I know many are gone,
I’m still living on,
I want to thank You.
…

In Retrospect

Last year changed its seasons
subtly, stripped its sultry winds
for the reds of dying leaves, let
gelid drips of winter ice melt onto a
warming earth and urged the dormant
bulbs to brave the m
pain of spring.

We, loving, above the whim of
time, did not notice.

Alone. I remember now.

😢

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hope, spring, high,
Still I’ll rise.

One More Round

There ain’t no pay beneath the sun
As sweet as rest when a job is well done
I was born to work up to my grave
But I was not born
To be a slave.

One more round
And let’s heave it down
One more round
And let’s heave it down.

My Arkansas

There is a deep brooding
In Arkansas.
Old crimes like moss pend
from popular trees.
The sullen earth
is much too
red for comfort.
…

Just for a Time

…
I don’t like reminiscing
Nostalgia is not my forté
I don’t spill tears
On yesterday’s years
…

Men

When I was young, I used to
Watch behind the curtains
As men walked up and down
The street. Wino men, old men.
Young men sharp as mustard.
…