rennie ♡ > Recent Status Updates

“I thought about love. I walked to the store and saw a father teaching his son to ride a bicycle. Or old people who walked hand in hand through the city centre. All kinds of people were carrying on like this that spring, the fathers just ran and ran, gripping the racks on the bikes with their hands, I saw love everywhere. It was a delusion. Or maybe it was true. I don’t know for sure.”

“She reads books and her hair falls down over her eyes. She reads until it grows dark, leaning over the kitchen table. She understands everything. And forgives everything. But I don’t understand her. And I don’t know her.”

“Such random things. That they can change everything.”

“I want to be invisible. I don’t want to be who I am.”

“I have to be calm. I have to be a grown up. I’m the one she trusts, they say so at the health clinic and it’s true. I have to calm down.”

“I couldn’t really grasp that they were real. That they were mine.”

“He did, it was in the flat we had before and the sunlight sparkled on the dust in the air and I stood in the doorway of the bedroom and stared at them.”

“I had thought I would bake and there would be the smell of freshly baked bread in the hallway, I would smile at the parents at the kindergarten and always have something to do at the weekends, I would wash Alex’s gym clothes and hang them on a clotheshorse. And I dreamt of how Alex would lift Alexa high above him, in the bedroom, with yellow light coming through the window. I remember how once he did this.”

“I just can’t bear it, how that word means me, that it’s me who’s supposed to be Mommy, the one she’s calling for all the times she calls out, Mommy, can you untie this, Mommy, can I sleep with you, Mommy, what are you doing now?
I do such stupid things. I am not to be trusted. I never have been. I wanted to be, I did.”

“The night isn’t dangerous, you know. Night-time is exactly like daytime, just that it’s a little dark.”

“I sat and looked out the window. All you could see from there was asphalt and low-rise buildings, but back then I liked asphalt, and low-rises and parked cars, I was so deeply in love, I liked everything, the snow and the tires on the cars, a tabby cat that slipped between them. And I thought: this is the only place I want to be.”

“And when he touched me, I didn’t need to say anything, we spoke another language together, one that made sense to me.”

“Because we can’t help everybody.”

Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this.

My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all.

Would it be a major bereavement for you if I died? I said.

There are seven types of people one should not have as a friend.

The first is an exalted and high-ranking person. The second, somebody young. The third, anyone strong and in perfect health. The fourth, a man who loves drink. The fifth, a brave and daring warrior. The sixth, a liar. The seventh, an avaricious man.

The three to choose as friends are – one who gives gifts, a doctor and a wise man.

It is because they have no fear of death that people fail to enjoy life – no, not that they don’t fear it, but rather they forget its nearness. Of course, it must be said that the ultimate gain lies in transcending the relative world with its distinction between life and death.’

‘Well then, if people hate death they should love life. Should we not relish each day the joy of survival? Fools forget this – they go striving after other enjoyments, cease to appreciate the fortune they have and risk all to lay their hands on fresh wealth. Their desires are never sated. There is a deep contradiction in failing to enjoy life and yet fearing death when faced with it.

You are forever pondering pros and cons, endlessly absorbed in questions of gain and loss. And on top of delusion comes drunkenness, and in that drunkenness you dream.

If you follow the ways of the world, your heart will be drawn to its sensual defilements and easily led astray; if you go among people, your words will be guided by others’ responses rather than come from the heart. There is nothing firm or stable in a life spent between larking about together and quarrelling, exuberant one moment, aggrieved and resentful the next.

Let’s not rush into things,’ one imperative thing after another will occur to detain you. There will be no end to it all, and the day of decision will never come.

If you say to yourself, ‘Let’s just wait until after this is over,’ or ‘While I’m at it I’ll just see to that,’ or ‘People will criticize me about such-and-such so I should make sure it’s all dealt with and causes no problem later,’ or ‘There’s been time enough so far, after all, and it won’t take long just to a wait a little longer while I do this.

Only a complete fool is led astray by avarice.

Great wealth will drive you to neglect your own well-being in pursuit of it. It is asking for harm and tempting trouble.

Around the twentieth day of the ninth month, someone invited me along to view the moon with him.

It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.

What happiness to sit in intimate conversation with someone of like mind, warmed by candid discussion of the amusing and fleeting ways of this world … but such a friend is hard to find, and instead you sit there doing your best to fit in with whatever the other is saying, feeling deeply alone.

No matter how splendid in every way, there is something dreadfully lacking in a man who does not pursue the art of love. He is, to coin the old phrase, like a beautiful wine cup that lacks a base.

There is nothing worse than when someone you thought impressive reveals himself as lacking in sensibility. Status and personal appearance are things one is born with, after all, but surely the inner man can always be improved with effort. It is a great shame to see a fine upstanding fellow fall in with low and ugly types who easily run rings round him, and all for want of cultivation and learning.