(no subject)
It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, "Yea, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll - then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time. (p. 382)
But he took another deep hit on the joint and it sent him back to twelve, being twelve; a precocious kid, waking up eaching morning fully expecting a twelve hours until nuclear apocalypse announcement, that old, cheesy, end-of-the-world scenario. Round that time he had thought a lot about extreme decisions, about the future and its deadlines. Even then it had struck him that he was unlikely to spend those last twelve hours fucking Alice the fifteen-year-old babysitter next door, telling people that he loved them, converting to orthodox Judaism, or doing all the things he wanted and all the things he never dared. It always seemed more likely to him, much more likely, that he would just return to his room and calmly finish constructing Ledo Medieval Castle. What else ould you do? What other choice could you be certain about? Because choices need time, the fullness of time, time being the horizontal axis of morality - you make a decision and then you wait and see, wait and see. And it's a lovely fantasy, this fantasy of no time (TWELVE HOURS LEFT TWELVE HOURS LEFT), the point at which consequences disappear and any action is allowable... But twelve-year-old Josh was too neurotic, too anal to enjoy it, even the thought of it. Instead he was there thinking: but what if the world doesn't end and what if I fucked Alice Rodwell and she became pregnant and what if --
It was the same now. Always the fear of consequences. Always this terrifying inertia. (p. 411)
White Teeth
Zadie Smith is such a balla!!!!
But he took another deep hit on the joint and it sent him back to twelve, being twelve; a precocious kid, waking up eaching morning fully expecting a twelve hours until nuclear apocalypse announcement, that old, cheesy, end-of-the-world scenario. Round that time he had thought a lot about extreme decisions, about the future and its deadlines. Even then it had struck him that he was unlikely to spend those last twelve hours fucking Alice the fifteen-year-old babysitter next door, telling people that he loved them, converting to orthodox Judaism, or doing all the things he wanted and all the things he never dared. It always seemed more likely to him, much more likely, that he would just return to his room and calmly finish constructing Ledo Medieval Castle. What else ould you do? What other choice could you be certain about? Because choices need time, the fullness of time, time being the horizontal axis of morality - you make a decision and then you wait and see, wait and see. And it's a lovely fantasy, this fantasy of no time (TWELVE HOURS LEFT TWELVE HOURS LEFT), the point at which consequences disappear and any action is allowable... But twelve-year-old Josh was too neurotic, too anal to enjoy it, even the thought of it. Instead he was there thinking: but what if the world doesn't end and what if I fucked Alice Rodwell and she became pregnant and what if --
It was the same now. Always the fear of consequences. Always this terrifying inertia. (p. 411)
White Teeth
Zadie Smith is such a balla!!!!