I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.
and then you stopped. And looked at me. And I knew then exactly what was going to happen. You kissed me, yes. But it was not just goodnight. Even then, I could feel the promise in it. The promise that you would kiss me just like that, forever.
"You don't know me, dude," he says, not smiling this time. Gonzo examines his cards, prepping for his next move. "People always think that they know other people, but they don't. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won't eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don't know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel ****ed up for no reason at all."
But even if I know what governs their trajectory, if I know the rules of the movement of things and how things are organized and how certain mutations, transformations, gestations take place, even if I know all that, I shall only have learnt how to get along after a fashion in the enormous gaol, the oppressive prison in which I am held. What a farce, what a snare, what a booby-trap. We were born cheated. For if we are not to know, if there is nothing to know, why do we have this longing to know?
When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is to learn the difference.
Awkward. That's exactly how it was when we walked over to our sister and stood on each side of her, looking at her and feeling things and not knowing what to do.
Isn't this what we want to know about those whom we care about? What is it like, we wonder at each meeting, in shared meals and secrets and silences, with each touch and glance, to be you?
The power of knowing, in that first two seconds, is not a gift given magically to a fortunate few. It is an ability that we can all cultivate for ourselves.
But when he sat on the bed beside me, then leaned over and kissed my forehead, my cheek, my lips, his hand pressed to my rib cage, the other stroking my hair back, it was like I was an empty well and didn't know it until just now when he uncovered me and it started to rain.
Portia gasped awake with the taste of apples in her mouth- crisp green apples smothered in brown sugar and spice. She needed to bake. Lying tangled in the sheets, she tried to calm her racing heart. She tried to write off this urge, too. It was nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to moving to the Big Apple. But no matter how forcefully she told herself she had stuffed the knowledge back down, she realized that she hadn't. Not really. When she would have smelled bleach and sundries cotton, it was the scent of apples and buttery caramel that swirled in her mind. The urges to bake and cook were getting stronger, the knowing coming back to life like simple syrup spun into cotton candy.