Hex

It’s going to be okay, this solitude, this lovelessness, this schoollessness, this unstructure, this floating, this sinking.

The fact is these mature men love the shit out of their second wives. Betty positively rescued them. Before Betty, they were misunderstood. Psychically lonely and imperfectly loved. Before Betty, all they had was cash. Now they have cash and Betty.

I look at you and I see how absolutely each person is afflicted, regardless of station, by envy. How envy is the best distraction from the completeness of our own lives. How longing is sacred and envy is rotten longing. How hard we are on our own happiness and how generous we are toward just about anyone else, how willing we are to believe that anyone else knows how.

If there's a pillar in your life, it's worth removing it. Break down your life and see what broke. If you were to imagine the three most essential elements of your days and then imagine your days without them, what comes rushing to take their place? It's so quiet when you bust down your acoustic paneling. Sometimes the body wants to be burned and sometimes it doesn't; self-neglect isn't infinite it's cyclical, as self-care is. Every time you get to a binary choice there's a third. Have you ever walked out with nothing to give but your innermost energy? Have you ever been nothing other than a crayon? We don't love most of the people we love. You're not who you thought I was.

For a gender so boastful, very odd that Western men relinquish their claim to the practice of magic, very odd that they wouldn't yearn to be witches too.

WHEN YOU CROW UP IN KANSAS WEARING VERY LARGE SHORTS, thinking not very much of yourself, thinking mainly of your knees, looking mainly at your knees, your face a frisbee that cant fly, your teeth buck, your eyebrows rectangles, your forehead more than half of your face, your shirts shapeless, your shape shapeless, your Kansas shapeless, your lust absent, your legs bowed, your arches flat, your chest flat, your ears your only curves, your ears never pierced, your denim never dazzled, your sneakers white, your socks white, your teeth turquoise with rubber bands, your cheese orange, your milk whole, your bread wonder, your luxury a tuna casserole, your pale a neon pale, your fantasy to race a Mario Kart over the desert and into the final oasis, your earthly oasis a salted pretzel, your solitude total, your urges not even visible to you on the clearest days at the farthest horizons, your blank magnificent, your inertia wild and authentic, your nothing your preference, and then into it somebody walks, a Joan, this sudden hero can really take control. You’re susceptible first to idolatry, then to study, to apprenticeship, and finally to a kind of patient love that makes fun of itself and believes in itself without limit. Imagine being a pudding cup of a person and encountering a confident, elegant, powerful scholar who knows what to do with her shoulders. Imagine encountering you.

I will never blame Barry for falling in love with you but I will blame him for considering himself eligible.

Okay,” Mishti said. “You know that if she had left Barry and went off with you she'd be your whole life and you’d be her midlife crisis.

Let me remove my laces. I’ll hand you these notebooks, stacked and tied and knotted. Call it a compendium. It is my lab work, my evidence, my chart, and if it repulses you, walk into your repulsion wearing the great badge of honor of one who has been seen. We’re starting into our new days now.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

How long until I am the recipient of my own discoveries and not their messenger?

The person who believes in you is the most dangerous person you know. The person who believes in you can unbuild you in an instant. We haven’t learned how to curb that danger. We don’t know what to do with the person who names our life.

Lose me as you lost your cat, your bearings, your wherewithal, your identity. Lose me as you lose autumn each year to ice, as you lose a year each year. Lose me as you lose a little weight and your bones show. Lose me like a wet food dropped face down. Both earrings. Any key. Lose me like what blew off the ferry. Lose me like the dollhouse furniture you kept since childhood and in adulthood misplaced while moving. Lose me like your prize mountain you saw once and can’t remember where it was, what country. Lose me the way you lose fog. Lose me and fuck you.

I am not in love with you, Nell Barber,” and it was the kindest and most legitimizing thing you could say, as if you could have loved me, as if you only happened not to, as if you only didn’t, not couldn’t, not wouldn’t dare.

It’s always been such a lukewarm encouragement between us—you are essential to me and I am okay to you—but lukewarm is about as hot as I get.

It’s acceptable to admire you. Admiration is the natural starting point and I did start there. Admiration is love without expectation and I’d be psychotic to expect.