read, love, live.
"Gil built up his law practice, my sister opened a store in Laguna Beach (kitchenware, table linens, top-quality grinders and gadgets), and even though Gil had to swallow more than twenty pills a day to keep himself alive, whenever they came east for family visits, he looked to be in good shape. Then his health turned. By the mid-seventies, a series of cardiac arrests and other debilitations made work all but impossible for him. I sent them whatever I could whenever I could, and with Betty working full-time to keep them going, Gil now spent most of his days alone in the house, reading books. My big sister and her dying husband, three thousand miles away from me. During those last years, Betty told me, Gil would plant love notes in the drawers of her bureau, hiding them among her bras and slips and panties, and every morning when she woke up and got dressed, she would find another billet-doux declaring that she was the most gorgeous woman in the world. Not bad, finally. Considering what they were up against, not bad at all."
*
"So what am I supposed to do?
Nothing.
What do you mean, nothing?
We start living again. You do your job, I do mine. We eat and sleep and pay the bills. We wash the dishes and vacuum the floor. We make a baby together. You put me in the bath and shampoo my hair. I rub your back. You learn new tricks. We visit your parents and listen to your mother complain about her health. We go on, baby, and live our little life. That's what I'm talking about. Nothing."
*
"In this way Brick and Flora swim along in their conjugal nothing, the little life she lured him back to with the good sense of a woman who doesn't believe in other worlds, who knows there is only this world and that numbing routines and brief squabbles and financial worries are an essential part of it, that in spite of the aches and boredoms and disappointments, living in this world is the closest we will ever come to seeing paradise."
*
"I'm getting the impression that you felt disappointed.
No, not disappointed. Far from it. Two newlyweds gradually adjusting to each other's foibles, the revelations of intimacy. All in all, it was a happy time for me, for both of us, with no serious complaints on either side, and then the dam in Africa was finished, and we went back to New York with Sonia three months pregnant.
Where did you live?
I thought you weren't interested in real estate.
That's right, I'm not. Question withdrawn.
Several places over the years. But when your mothers was born, our apartment was on West Eighty-fourth Street, just off Riverside Drive. One of the windiest streets in the city.
What kind of baby was she?
Easy and difficult. Screaming and laughing. Great fun and a terrible pain in the ass.
In other words, a baby.
No. The baby of babies. Because she was our baby, and our baby was like no other baby in the world."
- Paul Auster : Man in the Dark
*
"So what am I supposed to do?
Nothing.
What do you mean, nothing?
We start living again. You do your job, I do mine. We eat and sleep and pay the bills. We wash the dishes and vacuum the floor. We make a baby together. You put me in the bath and shampoo my hair. I rub your back. You learn new tricks. We visit your parents and listen to your mother complain about her health. We go on, baby, and live our little life. That's what I'm talking about. Nothing."
*
"In this way Brick and Flora swim along in their conjugal nothing, the little life she lured him back to with the good sense of a woman who doesn't believe in other worlds, who knows there is only this world and that numbing routines and brief squabbles and financial worries are an essential part of it, that in spite of the aches and boredoms and disappointments, living in this world is the closest we will ever come to seeing paradise."
*
"I'm getting the impression that you felt disappointed.
No, not disappointed. Far from it. Two newlyweds gradually adjusting to each other's foibles, the revelations of intimacy. All in all, it was a happy time for me, for both of us, with no serious complaints on either side, and then the dam in Africa was finished, and we went back to New York with Sonia three months pregnant.
Where did you live?
I thought you weren't interested in real estate.
That's right, I'm not. Question withdrawn.
Several places over the years. But when your mothers was born, our apartment was on West Eighty-fourth Street, just off Riverside Drive. One of the windiest streets in the city.
What kind of baby was she?
Easy and difficult. Screaming and laughing. Great fun and a terrible pain in the ass.
In other words, a baby.
No. The baby of babies. Because she was our baby, and our baby was like no other baby in the world."
- Paul Auster : Man in the Dark