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00c993b
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Here's what I love about painting. It's not about words or voice or tone or point of view or narrative arc (perish the thought); it's about the way certain branches stick straight out from the trunks of certain trees; it's about the clouds that you can barely see as well as the ones that pile on top of each other; it's about the swoop of telephone wires and the shapes and colors of shadows. A real painter recently told me that all artists w..
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Abigail Thomas |
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b91ce66
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I feel only gratitude. We are doing something as necessary to our well-being as food or air or water. We are steeping ourselves, reassuring ourselves, renewing ourselves, three creatures of two species, finding comfort in the simple exchange of body warmth.
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Abigail Thomas |
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33651cf
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Maybe there are clusters of souls born again and again into the same repertory company, and with each new birth they play different parts in a different play. Or maybe it's the same play. This would account for those moments of Oh! there you are! After all, there are those people we like and dislike, there are those people we love, and then there are those we recognize. These are the unbreakable connections.
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Abigail Thomas |
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6a2a8c6
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Forget career, forget the future, forget existential worries, just get yourselves a couple of dogs, and everything will be all right.
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simple
forget
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Abigail Thomas |
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889929e
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other people's condiments are depressing.
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Abigail Thomas |
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c5c486d
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After all, there are those people we like and dislike, there are those people we love, and then there are those we recognize. These are the unbreakable connections.
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people
connection-with-others
connection-with-people
connections
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Abigail Thomas |
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e390646
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I had always wanted to write but thought you needed a degree, or membership in a club nobody had asked me to join. I thought God had to touch you on the forehead, I thought you needed to have something specific to say, something important, and I thought you needed all that laid out from the git-go. It was a long time before I realized that you don't have to start right, you just have to start. Put pen to paper, allow yourself the freedom to..
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Abigail Thomas |
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5837fdb
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What is this longing, she will want to ask. This troubling feeling of more to come. You can make something out of it, I want to tell her. But that's what her life is for.
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longing-for
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Abigail Thomas |
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cc37e1c
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I went and bought Guitar Towns by Steve Earle instead of listening to my better self...After a bit, and despite my new relationship with time, I began to experience impatience. One song at a time was taking too long. I began to wonder if there wasn't some way I could cram all this music in at once. Oh hell. That's called fucking.
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Abigail Thomas |
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edc2a6f
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Don't worry," I say, putting a PG Tips tea bag in her mug. "It's been happening for years. It's not getting worse. Besides, I'm not hearing voice, I'm overhearing them. I just don't know what they are saying."
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Abigail Thomas |
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6e81484
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The thought that this happened and then this happened and then this and this and this, the relentless march of event and emotion tied together simply because day follows day and turns into week following week becoming months and years reinforces the fact that the only logical ending for chronological order is death.
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Abigail Thomas |
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1459d7a
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our bodies often give us electric shocks, sometimes to the tune of dozens a day. It's not dangerous. We are electric after all, which is hard to remember because inside we are so wet. I breathe in and out, thinking we are really machines, fleshy machines, oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Why am I not aware of this more often, us being such miracles, so well put together? Alive!
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Abigail Thomas |
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7cc1cc8
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But we're all looking for the place we belong. And what is home, anyway, but what we cobble together out of our changing selves? Maybe there isn't any it, as my friend said, only the longing
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Abigail Thomas |
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74048cd
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He is wearing an old overcoat from the Salvation Army in Easton, Pennsylvania. It cost five bucks ten years ago, Louise remembers. Henry is not interested so much in the bargain, he wants ghosts in his clothes. He likes wondering what another man kept in those deep pockets. He writes poems about it.
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poems
old-clothes
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Abigail Thomas |
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61e9846
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I have been trying to remember being young, which is hard because I don't feel old until I try to get up from my chair. Or when I look at the photograph Jennifer took of me sitting on a stool next to her twins, and really, from the back, it looks as if I have an open umbrella concealed under my skirt. How did that happen? I think, but, oh well, I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It's somebody else's turn now.
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Abigail Thomas |
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30c96aa
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DON'T KNOW WHO I AM," RICH SAYS OVER AND over. "There are too many thoughts inside my head. I am not myself." Yesterday he said, "Pretend you are walking up the street with your friend. You are looking in windows. But right behind you is a man with a huge roller filled with white paint and he is painting over everywhere you've been, erasing everything. He erases your friend. You don't even remember his name." The image makes me shiver, but ..
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Abigail Thomas |
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94128dc
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the last several years my life had begun to feel shapeless, like underwear with the elastic gone, the days down around my ankles.
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Abigail Thomas |
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248850e
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Good things happen slowly," said a doctor in the ICU months ago, "and bad things happen fast."
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Abigail Thomas |
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dc286f1
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I am trying to convince myself that failure is interesting. I look the word up in the to find its earliest incarnation, but it has always been just 'failure.' There's no Indo-European root meaning originally 'to dare' or 'mercy' or 'hummingbird' to make of the whole mess a mysterious poem. I can find no other fossilized remains in the word. Humility comes along on its own dime.
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Abigail Thomas |
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95c49ad
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It isn't just the dying part; it's the thought of the day coming when I will have already dead five, ten, two hundred years. All those centuries piling on top of me, like so many fallen trees. The fact that I will neither know nor care is of little comfort because I'm not, as yet, dead. The only cure for the fear of death is death.
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Abigail Thomas |
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74f2b98
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My definition of fear is that it's a constant companion, a sidekick, riding you like a watch, going in and out of the days. I don't live like that anymore. The fact that I'm sixty-three has something to do with it. What I used to fear was growing old--not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking ..
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Abigail Thomas |
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7357ea0
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When I was young, the future was where all the good stuff was kept, the party clothes, the pretty china, the family silver, the grown-up jobs. The future was a land of its own, and we couldn't wait to get there. Not that youth wasn't great, but it came with disadvantages; I remember the feeling I was missing something really good that was going on somewhere else, somewhere I wasn't. I remember feeling life passing me by. I remember impatien..
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Abigail Thomas |
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b3c7099
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I was in love with a poet. "I'm in it for the pleasure," I told my poet once, in a moment of bravado. The poet grinned at me. "I'm in it for the pain," he said. It ended sadly. The kind of ending where you wait together, holding hands and weeping, while off in another room, love slowly dies."
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Abigail Thomas |
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344172c
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Why does forgiveness irritate me so much?" I ask Chuck. "Because it's the ultimate act of passive aggression," he says. "Because it keeps sin alive," says my sister."
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Abigail Thomas |
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f874263
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He remembers what I forget and I remember what he forgets. It's too late for either of us to make another old friend.
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Abigail Thomas |
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c4a6861
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Wonderful news, a lovely day, but I don't trust good news and I don't like good weather. Dread has been my faithful companion, and without it I am alone.
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Abigail Thomas |
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8870c5f
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I tried not to think of this as an omen, but unwelcome thoughts enter my head all the time.
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Abigail Thomas |
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d375b3e
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I can never make the same painting twice, not that I want to, I guess. Still, it would be nice to make a better version of something, or try it in different colors, but I never remember how I did it, or when I fiddled with it, or what went down first. A lot depends on how long you let the paint set before interfering. I drip and fling and pour color onto the glass. Then I push the paint around. You have to have some faith. If it looks like ..
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Abigail Thomas |
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8f6c175
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Once upon a time, when I was young, his forgetting might have rendered my memory meaningless. I no longer require so much from life.
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meaning
personal-development-insights
personal-development
growth
life-philosophy
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Abigail Thomas |
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9e312ea
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Tirade Against "He Passed Away" You never hear it said, "He is passing away." It is always a fait accompli. "He passed." How I hate it. As if the body had nothing to do with it, as if the body hadn't even been around at the time but off playing Scrabble somewhere, or having a drink while the tenant moved out. Dying is the body's call, the shutting down of services is the body's last bit of business. Give credit where credit is due. Honor th..
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Abigail Thomas |
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0a7c0f2
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neurosis is for the young, who think they are made of time
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Abigail Thomas |
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32b0769
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THERE WAS A YOUNG MAN WHO HAD ARRIVED AT the Northeast Center angry and belligerent, as inclined to take a swing at you as not. He began showing up in Bill's studio and started to paint. Bill watched him become an artist, and gradually he stopped being at the mercy of his rages. He got well enough to leave the center and move to a group home. This is what he said to Bill before he left: "What is art, anyway, except not pounding on walls."
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Abigail Thomas |
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4614825
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He said maybe irony is the lens through which we see the picture in reverse
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Abigail Thomas |
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08f859e
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Being cautious is new territory; my specialty was leaping, not looking. These days I pay attention. You can stumble uphill as easily as down. Ice comes in smooth and corrugated. Plastic bags are slippery underfoot. A big dog can knock you to your knees.
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Abigail Thomas |
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28e1eba
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Yesterday in his hospital room my husband asked urgently, "Will you move me twenty-six thousand miles to the left?""Yes," I said, not moving from my chair. After a moment he said, "Thank you," adding in wonder, "I didn't feel a thing."
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Abigail Thomas |
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22eae7d
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Sometimes I feel like I'm rescuing a drowning man, and I only have time to rise to the surface for one gasp of air before I go back down again. There is an exhilaration to it, a high born only partly of exhilaration, and I find myself almost frighteningly alive. There is nothing like calamity for refreshing the moment. Ironically, the last several years my life had begun to feel shapeless, like underwear with the elastic gone, the days down..
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underwear
humble
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Abigail Thomas |
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ff62bc0
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Good things happen slowly," said a doctor in the ICU months ago," and bad things happen fast." Those were comforting words, and they comfort me today. Recovery is a long, slow process. There are good days and bad days for both of us."
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Abigail Thomas |
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38cf5c8
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Part of what I've learned is that if it isn't life and death, it isn't life and death.
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Abigail Thomas |
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c2bcea9
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looks as if I have an open umbrella concealed under my skirt. How did that happen?
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Abigail Thomas |
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d65a296
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I am trying to make sense of this. Survivor's guilt, acceptance, there were words that made me roll my eyes; surely I was too sophisticated for such cliches... So now today I look up the word acceptance and the definition is "to receive gladly" and that doesn't sound right. I flip to the back, and look up its earliest root, "to rasp," and discover this comes from the old English for "a thread used in weaving," and bingo, that's it. You can'..
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weave
weaving
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Abigail Thomas |
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6cb129c
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Death is both a certainty and an unknown, Chuck says. It's hard to get a grip on it.
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Abigail Thomas |
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8efb60a
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Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a "three dog night." --WIKIPEDIA"
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Abigail Thomas |
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d640900
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She was tired of relationships whose greatest intimacy consisted of sitting up all night weeping while love died.
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Abigail Thomas |
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7bb9d63
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You can appreciate things at four in the morning that would go right past you during the day.
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Abigail Thomas |