quotations and poetry

We all got holes in our lives

Waiting patiently for the blue sky to make its way into my spirit.

“We all got holes in our lives. Nobody dies in a perfect garment. We all got to face the nothingness before us and behind. Call it sleep. We all begin in sleep and thats’ where we find our end. Even in between, sleep keeps trying to claim us. To stay awake in life as much as possible – that may be the point.”

“We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.” – both, Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“Still, something deeply sad had been born buried in me, stirring occasionally inside like a creature moving in sleep.” – Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

“Her life stayed closer to the skin than most people’s.” – Alan Gurganus, Blessed Assurance

The Velveteen Rabbit

Read this to Grace and Whit today. They sat through the whole thing, spellbound (amazing because of the paucity of pictures in our copy). I cried as I read. This is an oldie but worth rereading.

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

“I suppose you are Real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”