brackett omensetter was a wide and happy man. he could whistle like the cardinal whistles in the deep snow, or whirr like the shy white rising from its cover, or be the lark a-chuckle at the sky. he knew the earth. he put his hands in water. he smelled the clean fir smell. he listened to the bees.
“a little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.”
“you came here to speak of what it means to love your best friend. ask: if flexing is being able to say the most in the fewest number of words, is there a greater flex than love? nowhere to hide, nowhere to go. a direct gaze.”
“in the course of time your life will be there in front of you: a life without motion, without crisis and without disorder, a life with no rough edges and no imbalance. minute by minute, hour after hour, day after day, season after season, something is going to start that will be without end: your vegetal existence, your cancelled life.”
“he showed me the circus in a way i had not been able to see it before,” celia says. “how it looked from the outside. we wrote letters to each other for years.” // “i would have written you, myself, if i could put down in words everything i want to say to you. a sea of ink would not be enough.”
