Devil House

But few things, at any rate, are more powerful than expectations. Blunt force, maybe. Firepower, certainly. Sword and steel. But even those have their limits. The imagination has none.

It’s the small favors we do for ourselves that we’ll remember when we’re older. A little pampering, insurance against the unknowable tides of the future, maybe.

There is, among the public, a perennial urge to believe the worst about the generation that will eventually replace them.

What would my work be like if I had to keep returning to the same story every time, I wondered. If, instead of hunting down sad places where people's lives had been ruined, there was only the one place, a place where, every time I told the story again, there was some new thing to learn about it, some overlooked ripple or wrinkle or speck that fleshed out the details, that brought them more fully to life: but with the provision, present in the process, that nothing could help, nothing would change, no one would be unburdened, or healed, or made whole.

The past is charming and safe when you're skittering around on its surface. It's a nice place to linger a moment before seeking the lower depths.

The future feels dramatic when you think you see a little of it cresting the horizon, the more so if the present feels routine.

That’s the thing, those of us on this side of the disaster, we get so dazzled by the fireworks, by the conflagration I want to say, that we don’t see the gigantic expanse over there on the other side of the flames, but, you know. People have to live there.

They always arrive at the same questions—why don’t these young people care? how did they get like this? where were their parents?—but the asking of these questions is an exercise in self-portraiture. They’re not good questions; they’re not even questions. They’re ghost stories masquerading as concern.

From an early age, you’d been in love with the world: there was so much in it, a life so full of surprises if you only stayed open to them, ready to receive the transmissions when they came. A devotee of the chance encounter, the found pleasure, the happy accident, your eyes always open, trying to spread some of your inner light around: that was you, the you everyone knew.

I remember before I finally fell asleep feeling like there wasn't all that much to say about my life. I'd had several satisfying relationships, they hadn't amounted to much. I'd gotten better at my work and been rewarded for it, but I sometimes felt like life had run out of surprises for me. I did what I did and got the results I expected. I kept up my practice and it paid my way. My wheels made an agreeable noise when they spun.

There was a gentle, blurry quality to the scene. I relaxed into it. You get susceptible to environments when you don’t keep much company.

to feel like you’re part of a longer conversation with the ground underneath you.

Morvidus; and in the richness of his reign, commerce prospered, the town around the castle growing great, and newe fangled habits did arise among the young and old. But after a time the people did say, that the old customs were gone out from the land; and that, with the coming of the new, the old had been washed away. Greatly did folk rue the passing of their customs, saying, that a kingdom ruled by thankless men, would, in short measure, become a kingdom unremembered; and men did complain, when they gathered, at how few remained who yet could call to mind the noble names of the gods. Those gods, they said, had once sustained this land; but they might forget as well as be forgotten, as would be seen. And then did the rains begin: those long rains, of which it was sayd, their like had never fallen; and the streams did overflow their banks, and flood the fields. And the ditches filled with mud, overflowing onto the roads, that none might pass in safety. And vermin did breed in the still water by night; and many infants were delivered still-born, for that the rains had so drenched the roadways, that mid-wives might by no means traverse them in their ladies’ time of need. Which seemed a very omen; and some did wonder, how best to please the gods who had served them so. In this time was delivered of her nine-months’ burden, good Queen Argoel, who in time would bear King Morvidus five children. As the rains battered the castle wall, the child began to kick within her womb, saying,—Mother, my time is come; yet, with the storm still upon the land, she lay abed unattended in her toil.

Now the birth of Gorbonian was as follows. His father the King, having defended his counties against the Flemish invaders, brought upon the land a time of feasting and plenty; and tribute did issue from the land all round, in gratitude to King Morvidus, who, though his mother had come from some far country, none knew which, did now guard his kingdom from marauders. And the people did say, that there was none so worthy as King

It's a luxury to work slowly; I know it. But I don't dwell on it. That's the nature of luxury. You become accustomed to its presence.

A CAVE I will never, ever get out of, you said: your exact words. A cave that probably has other people in it, maybe a lot of them, and sometimes you think you can hear them around you or behind you or ahead of you, talking, crying, pounding on the walls, but you can’t be sure because the pain is making you crazy, and to be crazy is to have more noises in your head than usual. A cave that can disguise itself as a morgue, or a coroner’s office, or a courtroom, or a bedroom, or the bathroom, you said: a cave you carry around with you like a chair you have to sit in wherever you go, and, to everybody else, it just looks like a normal chair, but to you it’s the top of a slide, and every time you sit down on it you head down into the depths.

IT IS DISORIENTING to inhabit, even momentarily, any space that has played host to one or more primitive drafts of the self you’ve now become. There can be pleasure in this, as in a reunion. There might also be fear, dread, horror: soldiers seeing old barracks, freed convicts driving past the prison on their way to work. To have left a place once is to have left something behind; by staying away, you can have the question of whether you do or don’t want to see that thing again answered for you. But learning to stay away is a discipline ...

LIFE IS A PROCESS of forgetting: of moving old things out of the way to make room for new things, of holding faded blueprints up to light to see where vanished angles might be hiding, of recalculating wants and needs on the fly. It’s not that we become forgetful as we age, though that’s true, too. It’s that a million things will need to be forgotten along the way if our later forgetfulness is to have any meaning.

... children have greater powers of observation than many people suspect, and are often perfectly capable of drawing good conclusions from the information available to them, information not volunteered by anyone in particular but circulating openly, effortlessly, in the very air that they breathe.

Simple explanations are what people want when they’re scared.

... when adults are looking to pin something on a kid, almost any kid’s a potential target.

If you see good things early, you know what to look for later.

Known quantities help situate us in contexts that anchor us to ourselves ...

But there’s a considerable distance between the things we’re called to bear witness to and the things we’d prefer to see.

When the hour comes to remember old sayings, you learn a little about how they’ve managed to grow old without dying out.

No matter who you are when you’re young, you always notice how the adults wreck everything as soon as they show up on the scene.

It’s easier to rely on familiar things when you’re describing something different than to imagine a context whose parameters require faith, and vision. It’s a sure bet that when people see the easy way across such differences, they will take it.

... any place friends spend time together eventually starts feeling like a sort of home.

It’s good to have someone to mark out the boundaries, to keep them consistent. Some people wait their whole lives for such a person.

When you live alone, no matter how lovingly you decorate your space, you come to rely on the things that serve you best.