The Quick and the Dead

He could almost taste the tang of that swampy air right here in his own desert parking lot and hear the calls of the heavily beating flock, sorrowing and apologizing and making plans for some other time. Time. He realized that crows had always reminded him of time, dark time. He gazed at the backs of his hands, at the plummy dark repellent veins.

You have never seen such animals as these who without a sound or a sign carry you off. You race with them across the long familiar ground that in that moment seems so glorious, so charged with beauty, strange. In their jaws you are carried so effortlessly, with such great care that you think it will never end, you long for it not to end, and then you wake and know that, indeed, they have not brought you back.

I’ve seen what comes next. Vigils. Concern is the new consumerism. A person’s worth can be measured by the number and intensity of his concerns. Candles, lighting a candle, confers the kind of fulfillment that only empty ritual can bring. Empty ritual’s important. It’s coming back as a force in people’s lives. Its role is being acknowledged. It’s the keystone for tomorrow’s dealings in an annexed and exploited world. And holding a candle, cradling a little flame with others holding their candle, cradling their little flame gives people the opportunity to experience something bigger than themselves without surrendering themselves to it.

The woman regarded him. Her hands shook. She was really very drunk. “I know everybody in this room,” she said. “And you know what I see when I look at them? I don’t see anybody I know.

There was something shameful about surviving sorrow. You were corrupted. She was corrupted. She was no good anymore. She was inauthentic, apocryphal. She wanted to be a seeker and to travel further and further. But after sorrow, such traveling is not a climbing but a sinking to a depth leached of light at which you are unfit to endure. And yet you endure there.

You needed to know only one person in your life, and that was yourself. You had to find that person and make friends with it if you could and hope it wouldn’t turn on you before you had a chance to familiarize yourself with its habits and tear you limb from limb.

They don’t use the word used anymore. With cars it’s preowned. With books, preread. With clothes what would you say, preoccupied?

That was the problem with public art, it risked great ridicule.

Concern is the new consumerism. A person’s worth can be measured by the number and intensity of his concerns.

and he’d read that Pythagoras thought that in a previous existence he’d been a bush, which was such a stellar thing to admit to thinking.

There’d be secret knowledge. Fulfillment. He’d come back just to prepare to go out again to remote, empty, and beautiful places where self and sanity had no more meaning than the wind dropping at nightfall.

He’d come back just to prepare to go out again to remote, empty, and beautiful places where self and sanity had no more meaning than the wind dropping at nightfall.

You’re supposed to pray when your heart is broken, to have it break completely so that you can begin anew,

Nothing we do is inevitable, but everything we do is irreversible. How do you propose to remember that in time?

It was just before dusk. Then there would be dusk. Then night. Day again. The little deaths – las muertes chiquitas - then the big one. It was all practise.

Poppa was going to bury them when he was up to it, but he was becoming more and more preoccupied with the news, at all hours of the day. His handyman abilities were slowly atrophying. Overwhelming input and feeble output, he’d say, that’s my problem now.

She should send him a little note, something fun, not too didactic: A HEART ATTACK IS GOD'S REVENGE FOR EATING HIS LITTLE FRIENDS.

You can do anything you want in this world,” J.C. said. “No, you can’t,” Emily said modestly. “Why, sure you can. And if you don’t you’ll never know the consequences. You won’t be leading any kind of life at all.

Shooting felt good. Joy consists in this, after all, the increase of one’s power.

And if, with some effort, they could recall the affairs that had been consummated, the roads taken, the languages mastered, the queer meals eaten in foreign lands, of what lasting consequence was that? This had been the destination all the while. Having been a good householder, having run a tight ship, having fought the good fight, whatever, it mattered not at all.

That guy had a job before you environmentalists took it away. Now he has nothing to do but ride his bike, his only treasure, then go home at night to terrorize his children and beat his wife. Spousal abuse is directly linked to environmental regulation. It can be stamped out only by stamping out nature—not human nature, the other one. That alone will provide jobs and stop the breakdown of the American family.

The blameless couple annoyed Alice, ignorant as they were of John Crimmins’s whereabouts, unknowing of Tommy or his end, blithely incurious about the charred plot of land to the south. Should not sickening cruelty leave its impressions upon the surroundings? Should not a repulsive act taint the very air?