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ba4d4fa
|
I nodded, pretending I was relaxed. I watched the sunlight sparkling on the water and practiced mind-body integration for a few seconds by quietly hyperventilating.
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relaxing
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Miranda July |
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6f056a8
|
We don't have intercourse anymore. I'm not complaining, it's my own fault. I lie there beside him and try to send signals to my vagina, but it's like trying to get cable channels on a Tv that doesn't have cable. My mind requests sex, but my vagina is just waiting for the next time it has to pee. It thinks its whole job in life is to pee.
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Miranda July |
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501b6e7
|
You know what? Forget what I just said. You're already a part of this. You will eat, you will laugh at stupid things, you will stay up all night just to see what it feels like, you will fall painfully in love, you will have babies of your own, you will doubt and regret and yearn and keep a secret. You will get old and decrepit, and you will die, exhausted from all that living. That is when you get to die. Not now.
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Miranda July |
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2b22051
|
In my paranoid world every storekeeper thinks I'm stealing, every man thinks I'm a prostitute or a lesbian, every woman thinks I'm a lesbian or arrogant, and every child and animal sees the real me and it is evil.
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Miranda July |
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32e68be
|
He's stuck at 3:14 a.m. with only the moon to talk to.
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Miranda July |
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fbcf48f
|
Maybe he wouldn't say anything, which is the worst thing men do.
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men
say
thing
worst
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Miranda July |
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bcb8063
|
And why had Deb's last boyfriend dumped her? I dumped him. Maybe you didn't French-kiss him enough. I promise you that wasn't it. Tell me how many times a day you kissed, and I'll say if it was enough. Four hundred. Not enough.
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sadness
|
Miranda July |
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83ef7fa
|
I supposed this was one reason why people got married, to make a fiction that was tellable. It wasn't just movies that couldn't contain the full cast of characters -- it was us. We had to winnow life down so we knew where to put our tenderness and attention; and that was a good, sweet thing. But together or alone, we were still embedded in a kaleidoscope, ruthlessly varied and continuous, until the end of the end.
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Miranda July |
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97861f4
|
I was going to die and it was taking forever.
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Miranda July |
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27b3d0d
|
When you live alone people are always thinking they can stay with you, when the opposite is true: who they should stay with is a person whose situation is already messed up by other people and so one more won't matter.
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Miranda July |
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c9138d9
|
All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life - where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.
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Miranda July |
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9aace2a
|
What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part--there was no one to blame and no way to reverse
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Miranda July |
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1c2770c
|
I knew the beginning and the end - I just had to dream up a convincing middle.
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Miranda July |
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b527ae0
|
There were a series of closing kisses, goodbye kisses, kisses placed like lids on boxes--then the lid would pop off and need to be replaced. There, this is the final kiss--no, this is the final kiss. This one is, it really is. And now I'm just kissing that kiss good night.
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Miranda July |
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58de183
|
it wasn't pretend, I wasn't in a fairytale or a fable. I shut my eyes and absorbed the silent whoomp that always accompanies this revelation. It's the sound of the real world, gigantic and impossible, replacing the smaller version of reality that I wear like a bonnet, clutched tightly under my chin.
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Miranda July |
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73a633c
|
Finally, in a low whisper, he said, 'I think I might be a terrible person.' For a split second I believed him - I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.
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Miranda July |
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25d3b33
|
Was she terrifyingly beautiful? Was she so ignorant she didn't deserve the truth? Was she also a liar and thus it was something they did together? I don't believe in psychology; which says everything you do is because of yourself. That is so untrue. We are social animals, and everything we do is because of other people, because we love them, or because we don't.
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Miranda July |
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a1ec38f
|
Two plus three is five, check the email, one plus seven is, check the email, eight, check the email, which comes to a total of, who the hell am I anyway, eighty five. This is how he dismembers his day, in the most painful way, moment by moment. A bigger man would just shoot it, put it out of its misery.
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|
Miranda July |
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2985218
|
As if I feared that the scope of what I could feel and imagine was being quietly limited by the world within a world, the internet. The things outside of the web were becoming further from me, and everything inside it seemed piercingly relevant. The blogs of strangers had to be read daily, and people nearby who had no web presence were becoming almost cartoonlike, as if they were missing a dimension. It was just happening, like time, like ..
|
|
life
need
internet
|
Miranda July |
|
e85b740
|
Did you ever really love her? Not really no. But me? Yes. Even though I have no pizzazz?
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|
Miranda July |
|
7647029
|
Was all this real to her? Did she think it was temporary? Or maybe that was the point of love: not to think.
|
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|
Miranda July |
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f29a1ce
|
This person mourns the fact that she has ruined her one chance to be loved by everyone; as this person climbs into bed, the weight of this tragedy seems to bear down upon this person's chest. And it is a comforting weight, almost human in heft. This person sighs. This person's eyes begin to close, this person sleeps.
|
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Miranda July |
|
3e7cec6
|
Well,I have a theory that men don't actually cry less than women,they just do it differently. Since we never saw our fathers cry,we are forced to invent our own unique method.
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|
|
Miranda July |
|
9919d81
|
I was wondering if my life, the life in which I had a son and a beautiful, young girlfriend, could exist outside of the hospital. Or was the hospital its container? Was I like honey thinking it's a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle?
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Miranda July |
|
95e0fe0
|
The word God asks a question and then answers it before there is any chance to wonder.
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|
Miranda July |
|
551608a
|
But as the sun rose I crested the mountain of my self-pity and remembered I was always going to die at the end of this life anyway. What did it really matter if I spent it like this--caring for this boy--as opposed to some other way? I would always be earthbound; he hadn't robbed me of my ability to fly or to live forever. I appreciated nuns now, not the conscripted kind, but modern women who chose it. If you were wise enough to know that t..
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Miranda July |
|
e19342f
|
He was worried she would not let him love her with the stain. He had already decided long ago, twenty or thirty minutes ago, that the stain was fine. He had only seen it for a moment, but he was already used to it. It was good. It somehow allowed them to have more.
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Miranda July |
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752ef3b
|
When I was fifteen, a dark shape came into my room at night. It was dark, but it glowed, which is the first of many facts you will have to tackle with your imagination. It wasn't in the shape of a person, but right away I knew it was like a person in every way except for how it looked. As it turns out, our looks are not the main thing that makes us human.
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|
Miranda July |
|
7697149
|
If I could quietly kill her without anyone knowing, I would.
|
|
murder
|
Miranda July |
|
8cc6e83
|
Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.
|
|
unfeeling
nothingness
|
Miranda July |
|
89609d2
|
I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.
|
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|
Miranda July |
|
cd33b16
|
I felt like I could do this forever, because nothing mattered more than anything else.
|
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|
Miranda July |
|
5ae54c8
|
My eyes fell on the gray linoleum floor and I wondered how many other women had sat on this toilet and stared at this floor. Each of them the center of their own world, all of them yearning for someone to put their love into so they could see their love, see that they had it.
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|
|
Miranda July |
|
c8432ab
|
That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea, I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I'm in a hot tub with some other people and we're all looking up at the stars, I'll be the first to say, It's so beautiful here. The sooner you say, It's so beautiful here, the quicker ..
|
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|
Miranda July |
|
1d06c3b
|
Like a rich person, I live with a full-time servant who keeps everything in order--and because the servant is me, there's no invasion of privacy.
|
|
|
Miranda July |
|
f391bef
|
Sometimes I lie in bed trying to decide which of my friends I truly care about, and I always come to the same conclusion: none of them.
|
|
friendship
|
Miranda July |
|
a337e29
|
I don't believe in psychology, which says everything you do is because of yourself. That is so untrue. We are social animals, and everything we do is because of other people, because we love them, or because we don't.
|
|
|
Miranda July |
|
5fcb601
|
LA isn't a walking city, or a subway city, so if someone isn't in my house or my car we'll never be together, not even for a moment. And just to be absolutely sure of that, when I leave my car my iPhone escorts me, letting everyone else in the post office know that I'm not really with them, I'm with my own people, who are so hilarious that I can't help smiling to myself as I text them back.
|
|
|
Miranda July |
|
41159ab
|
I pressed my lips against his ear and whispered again, It's not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told.
|
|
|
Miranda July |
|
b55c11d
|
I would always be earthbound; he hadn't robbed me of my ability to fly or to live forever. I appreciated nuns now, not the conscripted kind, but modern women who chose it. If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?
|
|
|
Miranda July |
|
f4ca6f2
|
I went to work the next day out of curiosity, as people return to their villages after the war to see what is left.
|
|
|
Miranda July |
|
90324f8
|
It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.
|
|
|
Miranda July |
|
6f53d0d
|
I do this before I bring someone new into my life; I try to get a sense of who I am so that I can make it easier for them to know me.
|
|
|
Miranda July |
|
a9cce27
|
She was a very beautiful person who was missing something very ugly. Her winnings were the absence of something, and this quality hung around her.
|
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|
Miranda July |