Madeline’s Reviews > Surfacing > Status Update

That is the real danger now, the hospital or the zoo, where we are put, species and individual, when we can no longer cope. They would never believe it's only a natural woman, state of nature, they think of that as a tanned body on a beach with washed hair waving like scarves; not this, face dirt caked & streaked, skin grimed & scabby, hair like a frayed bathmat stuck with leaves and twigs. A new kind of centerfold.

"To have someone to speak to and words that can be understood: their definition of sanity."

"He was neither of the things I believed, he was only a normal man, middle aged, second rate, selfish, and kind in the average proportions; but I was not prepared for the average, its needless cruelties and lies. My brother saw the danger early. To immerse oneself, join in the war, or to be destroyed. Though there ought to be other choices."

"He has realized he was an intruder; the cabins, the fences, the fires and paths were violations; now his own fence excludes him, as logic excludes love. He wants it ended, the borders abolished, he wants the forest to flow back into the places his mind cleared: reparation.
I say Father.
He turns towards me and it's not my father. It is what my father saw, the thing you meet when you've stayed here too long."

“What are they saying about me now?
That I was running away; but to go with them would have been running away, the truth is here.”

“Saving the world, everyone wants to; men think they can do it with guns, women with their bodies, love conquers all, conquerors love all, mirages raised by words.”

“It's love, the ritual word, he wants to know again; but I can't give redemption, even as a lie. We both wait for my answer. The wind moves, rustling of tree lungs, water lapping all around us.”

I will do it by myself, squatting, on old newspapers in a corner alone; or on leaves, dry leaves, a heap of them, that's cleaner. The baby will slip out easily as an egg, a kitten, and I'll lick it off and bite the cord, theblood returning to the ground where itbelongs; the moon will be full, pulling. In the morning I will be able to see it: it will be covered with shining fur, a god, I will never teach it any words.

“He trembles and then I can feel my lost child surfacing within me, forgiving me, rising from the lake where it has been prisoned for so long, its eyes and teeth phosphorescent; the two halves clasp, interlocking like fingers, it buds, it sends out fronds.“

But then I realized it wasn't the men I hated, it was the Americans, the human beings, men & women both. They'd had their chance but they had turned against the gods, & it was time forme to choose sides. I wanted there to be a machine that could make them vanish, a button I could press that would evaporate them without disturbing anything else, that way there would be more room for the animals, they would be rescued.