One Hundred Demons

The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away. I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.

This ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.

When we finish a book, why do we hold it in both hands and gaze at it as if it were somehow alive?

Same circus, different clowns, and without a doubt I'm one of them.

The histories of vampires and people are not so different, really. How many of us can honestly see our own reflection?

[Lynda's mother] You're stupid and you don't know it, that's you're problem. You talk, talk, talk, all the time. No one wants to listen to an idiot. [Young Lynda] Uh. OK. Thanks, Mom.

Is it autobiography if parts of it are not true? Is it fiction if parts of it are?

I became a teenager when I discovered how to give myself that feeling of wholeness, even if it lasted only for a moment even if it got me into huge trouble, it was the closest i could come to... to.. i don't remember.

The ability to exist in pieces is what some adults call resilience. And I suppose in some way it is a kind of resilience, a horrible resilience that makes adults believe children forget trauma.

Some people say they can't remember their childhoods at all. That early morning when they waited for others, bouncing the ball and watching its shadow, is lost to them. The ant hills on the sidewalk cracks, the grasshopper that fell in the storm drain, the ball too deep in the stickerbushes to ever be recovered, a morning spent waiting. What reason would we have for remembering any of it? Yet when we do, there is always a feeling of surprise and amazement over this little bit of lost world. Who knows which moments make us who we are? Some of them? All of them? The ones we never really thought of as anything special? How many kickball games did I play? And what would I give to have just one more ups. What would I give to see them all again. Chuckie, roll the ball this way. Chuckie, roll me a good one.

[Chucky] Ya peanut headed suckerfool! Take me on! Ya ugly knuckle butted dogface underpants! You think I'm playin'?