August 2011
“From time to time, life takes you by surprise. You sit in your lakou eating mangoes. You let the mango seeds fall where they may, and one day you wake up and there’s a mango tree in your yard.”
—E. Danticat
“‘When I was a girl,’ she said, searching with her coarse bent fingers for the contour of her own face, now buried under many layers of crow’s feet and wrinkles, ‘my skin was so dry that sometimes it peeled off in scabs pink with blood, like fish scales. I was very clumsy because my feet were weak, but I knew how to slip into a fall, how to not fight the force of the earth pulling me down. When I became a young woman, somehow my feet got stronger and I never thought about falling again, until now.’”
—E. Danticat
She Belongs To Me - Bob Dylan
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back
She can take the dark out of nighttime
And paint the daytime black.
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees
But you will wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees.
She never stumbles
She’s got no place to fall
She never stumbles
She’s got no place to fall
She’s nobody’s child
The Law can’t touch her at all.
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She wears an Egyptian ring
That sparkles before she speaks
She’s a hypnotist collector
You are a walking antique.
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
Bow down to her on Sunday
Salute her when her birthday comes
For Halloween buy her a trumpet
And for Christmas, give it a drum
“We had too many phantoms to crowd those quiet moments when every ghost could appear in its true form and refuse to go away.
As I sat on a white plastic bucket and watched him from my doorway, I regretted that we hadn’t found more comfort in each other. After I realized that Sebastien was not coming back, I wanted to find someone who would both help me forget him and mourn him for me. Perhaps this was too great a gift to ask of a man who was in search of the same thing for himself.
The plastic bucket slipped out from beneath me as I got up. Yves turned around and watched me stumble, trying to maintain my balance on my bad knee. By the time he reached me, I was already on my feet. He let go of my hand and walked back to the rocking chair, picked up the bottle of rum, and went back to his room.” —E. Danticat
As I sat on a white plastic bucket and watched him from my doorway, I regretted that we hadn’t found more comfort in each other. After I realized that Sebastien was not coming back, I wanted to find someone who would both help me forget him and mourn him for me. Perhaps this was too great a gift to ask of a man who was in search of the same thing for himself.
The plastic bucket slipped out from beneath me as I got up. Yves turned around and watched me stumble, trying to maintain my balance on my bad knee. By the time he reached me, I was already on my feet. He let go of my hand and walked back to the rocking chair, picked up the bottle of rum, and went back to his room.” —E. Danticat
“It took a love closer to the earth, closer to my own body, to stop my tears. Perhaps I have lost, but I have also gained an even greater understanding of things both godly and earthly.”
—E. Danticat
“Perhaps there had been joy for them in finding that sugar could be made from blood.”
—E. Danticat
“Good-morning. Good-night. What goes? Good-bye. The careful words exchanged between people whose mere presence reminds each other of a great betrayal.”
—E. Danticat
happy-sad memories
“I hear the weight of the river all the time. It creaks beneath the voices, like a wooden platform under a ton of mountain rocks. The river, it opens up to swallow all who step in it, men, women, and children alike, as if they had bellies full of stones.
It is perhaps the great discomfort of those trying to silence the world to discover that we have voices sealed inside our heads, voices that with each passing day, grow even louder than the clamor of the world outside.
…
I just need to lay it down sometimes. Even in the rare silence of the night, with no faces around.” —E. Danticat
It is perhaps the great discomfort of those trying to silence the world to discover that we have voices sealed inside our heads, voices that with each passing day, grow even louder than the clamor of the world outside.
…
I just need to lay it down sometimes. Even in the rare silence of the night, with no faces around.” —E. Danticat
“You may be surprised what we use our dreams to do, how we drape them over our sight and carry them like amulets to protect us from evil spells.”
—E. Danticat
“For somewhere in me, I still believe that perhaps one simple word could have saved all our lives.”
—E. Danticat
