When God Was a Rabbit

Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're special and that we're still here.

Memories no matter how small or inconsequential are the pages that define us.

And he uncovered in us a curious need: that we each secretly wanted him to remember us the most. It was strange, both vital and flawed, until I realised that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.

Things happen. To everyone. No one escapes.

Truth, as he always said, was overrated, nobody ever won prizes for telling the truth.

You see, that's who you are, Joe. All these things. That's the person I know, and through him is the way you'll know me, because connected to all these things are moments, and for so many of them, I was there. And that's the thing that hurts so much... You see, you were the only person who knew everything. Because you were there. You were my witness. And you make sense of the fucked-up mess I become every now and then. And I could at least look at you and think, at least he knows why I am the way I am. There were reasons. But I can't do that anymore and I feel so lonely.

I am here but I am not yours.

The first thing we need to find,' said Mr Golan, 'is a reason to live'. ... 'Without a reason, why bother? Existence needs purpose: to be able to endure the pain of life with dignity; to give us a reason to continue. The meaning must enter our hearts, not out heads. We must understand the meaning of our suffering.

You had to translate his actions, for they were seldom accompanied by words, because his world was a quiet world; a disconnected, factured space; a puzzle that made him phone me at 3am, asking me for the last piece of the border, so he could fill in the sky.

I divide my life into two parts. Not really a Before and After, more as if they are bookends, holding together flaccid years of empty musings, years of late adolescent or the twentysomething whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit.

No amount of self-sufficiency could dispel the craving he still felt for that person we no longer talked about; that person who'd taken him apart and left a piece missing that none of us could find.

We were solitary and apart. Slept during the day, uncurled at dusk like evening primroses; fragrant and lush. We never wanted to conquer the world, only our fears. We didn't keep in touch. Somewhere, though, our memories had.

Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're still here.

Everyone had a story of grief. Everyone else's was worse than yours.

I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug.

I walked out and breathed fresh air. I felt the sun on my skin. The world is a different place when you are well, when you are young. The world is beautiful and safe. I said hello to the gatekeeper. He said hello back to me.

And from that moment, I watched her. Watched her with different coloured eyes, until the raging energy that coursed through my body finally revealed itself and gave itself a name: envy. For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced itself with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear, a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice, and it was a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home.

You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older', I said. She smiled and said, 'And you can be. But it's not very easy to become Jewish.' 'I know,' I said forlornly, 'I need a number.' And she suddenly stopped smiling.

And my father went back into the forest and chopped down a tree. The sound of the trunk fracturing and splintering and falling to earth was the sound his heart would have made, could it speak.

I just want my friend back, I have become forgettable

I thought that probably I was worth more when I was younger.

<...> maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.

Shut up, Arthur,' said my mother, and he zipped his mouth shut like an infuriating child. Ginger started to laugh. Not at anything in particular, but just because Ginger was stoned.

It was left to Nancy and me to pick up the pieces that my brother had become; to resurrect his shrunken spirit and pull his pale tear-stained face from beneath his pillow and give sense to a world that had given him none; he loved, yet he wasn't loved back.

It was the final chapter of his breakdown, the moment when his glass drained of everything, and its emptiness awaited only for choices to come.

I was used to waiting for her. As a child I'd waited for hel all the time, but it never annoyed me because I didn't have the one thing that unfailingly stole hours from her life. 'Sorry I'm late' she used to say. 'It was my hair again. And she spoke of it as if it was an affliction like asthma or a limp or a problem heart, one that slowed her down

He started to do that, started to inform me of everything; the inconsequential, the meaningful; conversations that ended in a cul-de-sac of unanswerable rhetoric. i think it was because I knew everything about him, had read it all - the beautiful, the sordid, the all of his book. I had been his editor for 5 years, and now it seemed, had become his editor away from the printed page.

Emotions embarassed her except when she sang. My dad said that was exactly why she sang.