The Illusion of Separateness

I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment - we are all defined by something we can’t change.

Sometimes I wake up and lie still enough to hear a petal drop from the vase of flowers. Sometimes I lie awake and wish there was someone to hear my falling.

Every day is a masterpiece, even if it crushes you.

Whether you know it or not, we leave parts of ourselves wherever we go.

Love is also a violence, and cannot be undone.

Rain says everything we cannot say to one another. t is an ancient sound that willed all life into being, but fell so long upon nothing.

Anyone who is desperate or alone will agree there is comfort in routine.

In the end I didn't know who I was crying for, but it was something my body wanted to do, as though trying to digest grief.

He wanted to tell the baby that Paris was like a poem in stone.

Where are people going? I wonder what they hope will happen and what they are afraid of? For me it’s the same thing and has to do with being loved.

We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.

I was afraid of the sea when I was a girl. Someone said it went on forever and that frightened me. I wondered why my parents had chosen to live at the beginning and the end of the world.

He realized this early on, and realized too that what people think are their lives are merely its conditions. The truth is closer than thought and lies buried in what we already know.

We all have different lives, Martin believes – but in the end probably feel the same things, and regret the fear we thought might somehow sustain us.

She said that one day they would be very old, that the world would be a different place, but it would always be their world, and that the time apart now would be a nightmare from which they would recover - desperation buried under years of happiness.

Dave once asked me what blind people dream about. Mostly in sound and feeling, I replied. At night I fall in love with a voice, and then wake to a feeling of physical loss. Sometimes I close my eyes to a chorus of “Happy Birthday!” The smell of cake and the sound of feet under the table. I awake in a body that’s too big. I also dream in motion and sensation. My father’s boat and the snore of the mast; the rough fabric of the safety harness and the rip of Velcro. The sun on my legs. And endless stretch of water impossible to imagine.

I tried to convey to the boy how people’s lives are often altered by curved lines read slowly from paper, sand, or stone.

Then, breathing slow, and almost deliberately, stops. But for a moment the old man doesn’t realize he is dead. He can feel Martin’s heart and mistakes it for his own.

When he smiles, they mostly look away. But Martin likes to think they carry his smile for a few blocks – that even the smallest gesture is something grand.

isn't it nice how people are all different

In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment—we are all defined by something we can’t change.

Lives are staged from within.

His father was an attorney in Paris. He met Sebastien’s mother on a train to Amsterdam. There were no other seats. They were forced together and found they preferred it.

He might be famous (local newspaper or television) for finding it, true—but if fame takes away the thing it celebrates, then Sebastien would prefer the inspired silence. We’re all famous in our own hearts anyway.

Winter is for dreaming

But sometimes you have to break rules because nothing is perfect.

The poet Emily Dickinson said that nature is a haunted house, while art is a house that tries to be haunted. She was born and died in the same room.

We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness. We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change. I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory or fear or disappointment - we are all defined by something we can't change. Anyone who is desperate or alone will agree: there is a comfort in routine.

When sunlight pours into the bus, I put on sunglasses and get sleepy. I feel my eyes closing. Falling asleep is like walking out in a frozen lake. The ice gets thinner and thinner until suddenly you fall through.