Madi’s Reviews > Bag of Bones > Status Update

I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.

I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.

Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.


[3/3]

We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind us as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things—fish and unicorns and men on horseback—but they are really only clouds.


[2/3]

This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root-canal at a time; boat-builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T.


[1/2]

He might have bought his false teeth out of a catalogue, but he wasn’t stupid.

Things with the power to scare the living shit out of you on a thundery midnight in most cases seem only interesting in the bright light of a summer morning.

Yankee men don’t hug—that’s a truism you can put right up there with tough guys don’t dance and real men don’t eat quiche—but Bill pumped my hand almost hard enough to slop coffee from a cup that was three-quarters empty, and gave me a hearty clap on the back.

So what? I asked myself. Even if it should be true, so what? Ghosts can’t hurt anyone.
That’s what I thought then.

Brenda Meserve had done her best, but any good marriage is secret territory, a necessary white space on society’s map. What others don’t know about it is what makes it yours.