ken’s Reviews > All Down Darkness Wide > Status Update

“The world I had defended - and into which I had intertwined myself - did not love me… Still, they had something I wanted; they had stolen my God from me. That idea of God, of a world that, if touched rightly, might ‘give off sparks and take fire, yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him’, was something I couldn’t let go of. I would steal my God back. I would run with him through the burning streets.”

“The day I found out Jack had died, a part of my life that had been suspended in my subconscious suddenly locked into place. His death began to seem part of a lineage: men I knew and walked beside, collapsing under the pressured atmosphere of the world. That day, I felt as if we were all walking headlong into some winnowing fire, and the further we walked, the less of ourselves we seemed able to carry with us.”

“After a while, he started to whistle the song instead, and the birds were singing, too - a different tune, but no less steeped in a happiness brought on by the sunshine and the moving of the year. And I sat and listened, my head on his shoulder, and whatever it was the birds knew, my heart also sang.”