On Canaan's Side

There is such solace in the mere sight of water. It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent, gossamer items that medicate the poor soul

What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year-old heart breaking?

Tears have a better character cried alone. Pity can sometimes be more wolf than dog.

I am dwelling on things I love, even if a measure of tragedy is stitched into everything, if you follow the thread long enough

And be thinking, remembering. Trying to. All difficult dark stuff, stories stuffed away, like old socks into old pillowcases. Not quite knowing the weight of truth in them much more. And things that I have let be a long time in the interests of happiness, or at least that daily contentment that I was once I do believe mistress of

I wonder if I were to have an X-ray at the little hospital, would the machine see my grief? Is it like rust, arheum about the heart?

I hate writing, I hate pens and paper and all that fussiness. I have done well enough without it too, I think. Oh, I am lying to myself. I have feared writing. But books have saved me sometimes, that is the truth - my Samaritans.

Four men killed that day. The phrase sat up in Willie's head like a rat and made a nest for itself there

And what else could we have come here for, except to sense these tiny victories? Not the big victories that crush and kill the victor. Not the wars and civil ructions, but the saving grace of a Hollandaise sauce that has escaped all the possibilities of culinary disaster and is being spread like a yellow prayer on a plump cod steak - victoriously.

We may be immune to typhoid, tetanus, chickenpox, diphtheria, but never memory. There is no inoculation against that.

The devil, I am beginning to suspect, and great grief it is causing me, has a greater sense of justice than the other man.

To remember sometimes is a great sorrow, but when the remembering has been done, there comes afterwards a very curious peacefulness. Because you have planted your flag on the summit of the sorrow. You have climbed it.

Our smiles mostly for each other, and every stranger a possible demon or bear, till they proved otherwise

may be immune to typhoid, tetanus, chickenpox, diphtheria, but never memory. There is no inoculation against that.

The Bible is like a particular music, you cannot always catch the tune of it.

Is it like a rust, a rheum about the heart?

Oh yes I am thinking the human soul is a very slight thing, and not much evolution has gone into it I fear. It is a vague slight notion with not even a proper niche in the body. And yet is the only thing we have that God will measure.

One moment, fine enough, sorrowing, but fine, sort of. The next, a big bulge of grief in my throat, so that if I had to speak in that moment my voice would be high and squeaky.