The Passion of Cleopatra

You will learn as you get older, my dear girl, that not everyone reads as you do. Not everyone has the same encounter with language. There is a heightened sensitivity in you, to be sure, but you can embrace it. It’s far more than just a nervous condition, these tears you shed when you read of Cleopatra and Marc Antony’s fall. You are a rare and beautiful thing, Sibyl. For most people, words are just symbols for sounds, made on paper. For you, they can create all new worlds in your mind.

This is what love is, isn’t it? It’s not a thing for which you clear a certain space in your life. It takes over your life, and all else must be made to fit to it, or the result is endless grief or a willful numbness that results in the death of your spirit before your body.

For most people, words are just symbols for sounds, made on paper. For you, they can create all new worlds in your mind.

Call me Ramses the Damned. For that is the name I have given myself. But I was once Ramses the Great of Upper and Lower Egypt, slayer of the Hittites, father of many sons and daughters, who ruled Egypt for sixty-four years.

There is no heaven. There is no hell. There is no above or below. If there is a realm beyond this one, it is no more beautiful, no more significant, no more full of truth, than ours here on earth.

You see, sometimes, Alex, we have to lose things to learn compassion. And sometimes we are overcome by change that arrives with some measure of violence, but leaves us transformed for the better.

except how much all of us give up in this life, sooner or later, because we can never have all that we want. You’ll find out soon enough. We’re blessed, my dear. Quite blessed, but no life is without sacrifices.

I am your queen,” the woman answered.

All over the lawn, the immortals had begun to wither and decompose, creating little pockets of chaos among the guests.

I have named them the hounds of Sisyphus.

And we are this, this only, this ecstasy that flesh can give to flesh.

Ah, so much to ponder. But not now. Now was the time for the conjugal blessing of this new abode.

Most people don't change, do they?" He'd stopped suddenly, his hands in his pockets, staring at a motorcar as it chugged past. "No matter what happens to them. No matter what they go through. They do everything they can to preserve their prejudices. Or their ambitions, even if those ambitions were cast when they were quite young and foolish. This is the business of living, as I once described it, isn't it? To explain away new experiences with old beliefs.

And how fearless of the earl to leave the windows open, to allow the ocean air to kiss their naked bodies as

opened her handbag and dropped several raw steaks through the grate—

But when you feel as if you are but a dry leaf carried by the endless winds of time, and you can bear the thought of what seems like a haphazard wandering no longer, you must go where there is pain and seek to alleviate it.