The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

So tell me gentleman, tell me the time and place where it was easy to be a woman.

When you were a little girl, Madam.....was this the woman you dreamed of becoming?

And finally: Who are we when we’re not ourselves?

I knew that not all lives are equal, that the time we live in affects the person we are, more than I had ever thought. Some have a harder chance. Some get no chance at all. With great sadness, I saw so many people born in the wrong time to be happy.

There is a truth that everyone knows but you. Each of us has it; no one is immune. Not a secret, not a scandal, but something simple and obvious to everyone else. It can be as simple as losing weight, or as difficult as leaving a husband. How awful, to sense that everybody knows the thing that would change your life, and yet no one is friend enough to tell you! You are left to guess, all by yourself. Until that moment comes when it reveals itself to you, and of course this revelation always comes a moment too late.

The possibilities. Is there any greater pain to know what could be, and yet be powerless to make it be?

Who on earth would not long to be fought for? Is this not the very heart of human existence, to be worth fighting for, worth losing everything for?

A shrew, a wife, a whore. Those seemed to be my choices. I ask any man reading this, how could you decide whether to be a villain, a worker, or a plaything? A man would refuse to choose; a man would have that right. But I had only three words to choose from, and which of them was happiness? All I wanted was love. A simple thing, a timeless thing. When men want love they sing for it, or smile for it, or pay for it. And what do women do? They choose. And their lives are struck like bronze medallions. So tell me, gentlemen, tell me the time and place where it was easy to be a woman?

Why is it so impossible to believe: that we are as many headed as monsters, as many armed as gods, as many hearted as angels?

I understand that it wasn't that you didnt want to be with me anymore, but you didn't want to be yourself anymore, the one you were with me.

Lovers don't leave if there's any hope at all.

Life, it’s so unlikely,” she said, then turned to me again. “It’s so much better than we think it is, isn’t it?

Surely words are just the background music when passion pounces on a soul.

Grief will go--it always does-- but not before it forces us to do these absurd things, and hurt ourselves, and bring on suffering, because grief, that parasite, above all else does not want to die, and only in these terrible moments it creates can it feel itself thrashing back to life.

The heart will hear only one sound. A “no” will pass unnoticed, and a “good-bye” will be heard only as a deferral of hope; the future is unmarred, pushed forward by events but untouched by them because the heart sees only a perfect future with its beloved, and hears only news about that future. The rest, as they say, is noise. There is only one sound it can hear. There is only “yes.

THERE ALMOST HAS to be a heaven, so there can be a place where all things meet. Where time folds in, a lifted tablecloth after the meal, and gathers all the scattered crumbs of life.

What I wanted to say was: I understand that it wasn't that you didn't want to be with me anymore, but you didn't want to be yourself anymore, the one you were with me.

It’s so unlikely to be alive, isn’t it? The right temperature, and gravity, the right atoms combining at the precise right moment, you’d think it would never happen.

THERE ALMOST HAS to be a heaven. If other worlds surround us, just a lightning bolt away, then what would stop us from slipping there? If love has left us, well, then there is a world where it has not. If death has come, then there is a world where it has been kept at bay.

For is my story really so unusual? To wake each morning as if things had gone differently -- the dead come back, the lost returned, the beloved in our arms -- is it really any more magic than the ordinary madness of hope?

With lovers, though, the end is always there. It is a death as certain as the real death, and those of us in love, as at the bedside, begin to prepare ourselves. We might say it isn't working, or I can't give you what you need, and yet a day later there he is in your arms, and who can help it? There is the good-bye, and the good-bye, and the good-bye, and which will stick? Who can ever say, this is the last? One one is true, but all of them feel true, and the tears we shed are equal every time.

Who can ever say, this is the last? Only one is true, but all of them feel true, and the tears we shed are equal every time.

Despite the gray in his beard, what I felt kept him young were the childhood hobgoblins he retained as pets: his fear of sharks, even in a swimming pool; his fear of mispronouncing “dour.” He laughed each time he caught himself, and told me so.

I say this simply as a woman rattling the cage to be free. And what do I mean by free? Just to walk down the street. Just to buy a newspaper without a single eye deciding my place. A shrew, a wife, or a whore. Those seemed to be my choices. I ask any man reading this, how could you decide whether to be a villain, a worker, or a plaything? A man would refuse to choose; a man would have that right. But I had only three worlds to choose from, and which of them was happiness? All I wanted was love. A simple thing, a timeless thing. When men want love they sing for it, or smile for it, or pay for it. And what do women do? They choose. And their lives are struck like bronze medallions. So tell me, gentlemen, tell me the time and place where it was easy to be a woman?

It's easy to say something is all in your head. It's like saying a sunset is all in your eyes," she said, gesturing, pursing her mouth in small furies. "It's stupid, it's nonsense. It has no brain for beauty.

I recall how the flash of her glowing dress against my closing eyelids was like the neon glow of hotels flashing VACANCY VACANCY on a long night ride. I felt the weight of my mind hanging from a branch, pulling, pulling, and before I knew it the stem had snapped and I was falling, blind, into the void.

It’s easy to say something is all in your head. It’s like saying a sunset is all in your eyes,” she said, gesturing, pursing her mouth in small furies. “It’s stupid, it’s nonsense. It has no brain for beauty.

When you were a little girl, madam,” he said, gesturing to her, “was this the woman you dreamed of becoming?

Come si definisce il tempo quando non ci siamo? Per esempio, quando abbiamo bevuto tanto che i minuti si rincorrono con in mezzo dei vuoti, o perdiamo per strada ore intere, e però eravamo lì, abbiamo detto e fatto cose, e siamo ritenuti responsabili di quello che è stato. Oppure quel breve istante in cui al telefono ci risvegliamo e ci ritroviamo nel pieno di una conversazione, e dobbiamo bluffare per riprendere il filo. Come si chiamano questi vuoti temporali? Quale parte di noi continua a funzionare in quei momenti? Dobbiamo essere ritenuti responsabili di quel che facciamo? E infine: chi siamo quando non siamo noi stessi?