Cara Lee > Recent Status Updates

"In the dead of the night, I could hear in my headphones the lifeless noise of the universe. The noise was faint but constant, more eternal than the stars. Sometimes I thought it sounded like the endless winter winds of the Greater Khingan Mountains. I felt so cold then, and the loneliness was indescribable."

"He had been there to help dismantle the Normandie-'the most beautiful ship ever built'-as it lay charred & half drowned in the Hudson River in America. 'But somehow even that was beautiful...because in a breaker's yard you discover anything can have a new life, be reborn as part of a car or railway carriage, or a shovel blade. You take that older life & you link it to a stranger.'" -Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

I was hiding under that tree.
Out there, I saw people in despair.
I saw them without water.
I don't know why I survived.
Maybe it's a miracle.
Some of them just died of desperation.
Some of them went insane.
Some of them lost their minds.
You could hear them screaming.
Some fell all alone.
I heard one guy screaming, daring the Border Patrol to come find him.
Stupid things like that.

"There are other games the Border Patrol guys play. Sometimes they toss a recently shot rattlesnake, dead but still writhing and rattling, into the cage with the captured wets. Ha ha - that's a funny sight, watching them go apeshit in the back of the truck."

"He could feel the tiger just beside him, through the wooden planks, the big red heart clenching and unclenching under the ribs, the weight of it groaning through the floor."

"Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."

"...and she'd drink her way through most of the bottle. There was something methodical about the way she did it, something brutally efficient, as if she was feeling her way back, decision by decision, across an unlit landscape mined with regret."

"He edged ever-so-slightly closer to the rim of the platform, the toes of his black loafers less than two inches from the five-foot drop-off to the tracks below. He cast a quick, stealthy glance at the woman and was certain she, too, had edged forward on the platform. Was she mocking him?"

"No man is going to hire you on. No man is going to understand the needs of your child. No man is going to give you a room, love your child as you love her. This is her home. You're not going anywhere. No man is going to love you, not after what you've done."

"The whole storm came down on us. The sun was gone. There was a thrill on the boy's face. But then we were struck apart. I didn't know what I saw. A light flashed on his body. The light lifted him and took him away. The light was so close that it was like it came from inside my own eyes. The boy was gone. I couldn't see him. My soles burned."

"We have Gussie. That's what comes of you. You're more beautiful than any woman, but something inside you brought us Gussie. Not the child I expected." And Gussie loosened her grip, slid down from the sumac. And she watched the moon leave the window, the stars swirl. And she tried the words, tried them on her tongue, to see if the words would fit the shape of her mouth. "We have Gussie... That's what comes of you..."

But I can't see any signs of quake damage here. Maybe it's been covered up, plastered over, like so many inconvenient wounds.

But sometimes I think there's another life I could have had. Should have had. And maybe some other version of me is having it, like in some Sci-Fi Channel Movie... Which probably means it's low-budget and lame.

But sometimes I think there's another life I could have had. Should have had. And maybe some other version of me is having it, like in some Sci-Fi Channel Movie... Which probably means it's low-budget and lame.

While the turkey was baking and delicious smells filled the kitchen, I thought about how we had sacrificed a life to uphold an American tradition. I hoped that we were doing the right thing and that this bird had not died in vain.

"The most important part of a story is the peice of it you don't know."

"Whenever I hear this kind of thing," he said, "a person speaking about constitutional rights, free speech, and so forth, I think, "How can he be such a sap? Now I can be sure that man is a Red." A word to the wise, Mr. Shepherd. We just do not hear a real American speaking in that manner."

"Mrs. Brown, I have an odd impairment: the world paints its prejudices boldly across banners, and somehow I walk through them without seeing."

"MacArthur claimed he spoke for thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and in the deep waters of the ocean. But how could he speak for so many silent lips lying blue beneath the water? Little fish are surely pecking at them now, nourished by worlds of misfortune."

"If you ever think a day is fine, you weren't paying attention. Probably somebody was getting clapped bloody while you ate your breakfast."

"He's richer than God," she said. "Then he must have sunrise in his pocket. And mercy in his shoes."

The other women begged her to stay, saying it was too early and planes could still fly overhead. She paid no heed and ran across the field to Chukhrai, taking her four-year-old son by the hand and holding her infant on her arm. She made it halfway across the field when she saw the plane.

The most extraordinary things arrive at the table, like the "gourmet" dish I didn't realize I had ordered in Romania and which seemed to consist of tubing and flames, a sort of urinary tract flambé.

"My guru says bacon & speed are the 2 greatest evils in the world." "Speed? Worse than, oh, crack cocaine?" "No, no, speed. You know - the hectic pace of modern life. Too much speed, too much rush, too much communication. That's what she says." "I see. And bacon, too."

Otter with Lobster Sauce. Ingredients: 1.5 kg otter chunks... 8 tablespoons sunflower oil... 8 medium nasturtium leaves, chopped... 1 sliced shallot... 150 ml dry white wine... 1/4 teaspoon sugar... 1 saffron stamen (really and truly: one single thread)... 300 gm lobster meat... 1 anchovy fillet... 1 tablespoon tiny capers... 1 teaspoon olive oil... 1 teaspoon Fernet Branca... Mayonnaise.

How old should each person be in the afterlife? Should this grandmother exist here at her age of death, or should she be allowed to live as a young woman, recognizable to her first lover but not to her granddaughter?

"In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together. You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on a toilet."