"When you open a book," the sentimental library posters said, "anything can happen." This was so. A book of fiction was a bomb. It was a land mine you wanted to go off. You wanted it to blow your whole day. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of books were duds. They had been rusting out of everyone's way for so long that they no longer worked. There was no way to distinguish the duds from the live mines except to throw yourself at them headlong, one by one. --Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

I would like to live to be a hunded because loving and being loved are so good and there are so many books; but were I to learn now that I had only a week left, I would finish today's spell of writing, have the cup of coffee that I crave and go on with the one book I'm reading. --John Tittensor, Year One: A Record

August 21, 2012

Scrape-art

by Kate Inglis

I fell in love with a baby and I couldn't figure it.

It wasn't the highly practiced detached indifference of the past five years: yeah cute whatever. He could have been mine, you know those babies? The ones who look at you all still and goggle-eyed and they could have been yours. I held him under the guise of helping his mother but I wasn't helping his mother. I was helping myself. I looked over my shoulder and they were all busy so I put my nose to the top of his head for a sniff. Just to check. Yes. Ggrrrmph and I felt a string of drool ooze down across one knuckle, then another. Raaaaaaagh.
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