The City in the Middle of the Night

Part of how they make you obey is by making obedience seem peaceful, while resistance is violence. But really, either choice is about violence, one way or another.

Hernan always says that a perfect moment of beauty can last forever. But maybe some moments are so ugly that they never end, either. All you can do is be patient with yourself.

The only thing that makes life tolerable is that people forget most of the stupid things I say as soon as I finish saying them.

Listen to yourself, hear your own footsteps, your breaths, your heartbeats, oh, how many rhythms you make as you come and go! you are an orchestra.

to join with others to shape a future is the holiest act. This is hard work, and it never stops being hard, but this collective dreaming/designing is the only way we get to keep surviving, and this practice defines us as a community.

Maybe you don’t get to choose how you make peace, or what kind of peace you make. You count yourself lucky if peace doesn’t run away from you.

You only fantasize about princes when you’ve never seen one.

Discovering a new phobia was like the opposite of falling in love.

You might mistake understanding for forgiveness, but if you did, then the unforgiven wrong would catch you off guard, like a cramp, just as you reached for generosity.

And these lovers had discovered a powerful thrill, a joy that went all the way down to their stomachs, in weaving a big idea together. Like some wild rapture, the sensation of helping others to imagine something bigger than yourselves. Somehow, this weird love story is the foundation of this community’s politics, or religion. Rose lingers on the oddest parts, like when they finally reveal their invention to the rest of the community, or the tenderness when the couple becomes a trio. I sense the echoes from all the countless other times that people have passed this legend around, and the lesson that comes with it: to join with others to shape a future is the holiest act. This is hard work, and it never stops being hard, but this collective dreaming/designing is the only way we get to keep surviving, and this practice defines us as a community. Even the other communities that live apart from the midnight city, scattered all over the night in smaller cities or towns, share this origin story. Just as she finishes explaining, we roll to a stop. I look out and see the unmistakable crags of the Old Mother rising over the permafrost, with just a tiny wedge of light behind it. I squint as hard as I can, but the light still burns.

We measure the freedom of human beings by their ability to change with their environment. The only truly alien influence is the dead grasping fingers of our own past.

People can stand things for the sake of politics that they would never endure for love or profit.

That’s what history is, really,” Bianca says, “the process for turning idiots into visionaries.

Most people die for stupid reasons. The most anyone can hope for is to make some noises before that happens.

You could do whatever you felt like in Argelo, but so could everybody else.

That’s the problem with grand social ideas in general, they break if you put too much weight on them.

But that thought just makes me wish that we could go back to our dorm after this party, to cradle our teacups and talk about books we’ve read, brand-new ideas we’ve discovered, things that nobody but us realizes are wrong.

I can't do this thing anymore, where we live in a tiny space and pretend it's the whole world. People always have brand-new reasons for doing the same thing over and over.

She had a feeling it was never going to be that simple, that she couldn't just serve meatloaf and tell herself she was honoring the dead. The dead were just like the living: they all wanted something they could never have.

People here are not accustomed to seeing economic disputes settled with guns, but every economy runs on bullets, one way or another.

After many visits to the hammocks in the plaza, sharing the collective memory/dream, I realize that human civilization is based on forgetting. If I own a pair of shoes that used to belong to you, then my ownership relies on your forgetfulness. Humans are experts at storing knowledge and forgetting facts, which is why we saw this city from orbit and then pushed all the evidence into a hole. And I can’t help thinking of what Bianca said when I asked her about the Hydroponic Garden Massacre: that progress requires us to curate the past, to remove from history things that aren’t “constructive.” I don’t know if our power to forget makes humans stronger, more self-destructive, or maybe both.

A lot of what people call civilization is just neglect.

Every language is good for lying. Even body language. If we didn't lie, we couldn't communicate.

What was the point of feeling guilty, when people just kept hurting each other all the time?

What was the point in feeling guilty, when just kept hurting each other all the time?

As these things go from being 'moments I need to survive right now' to 'things that will always have happened to me,' I start to shiver.

That's what history is, really, the process for turning idiots into visionaries.