are you dreaming, Frederick?

"The appearance of things change according to the emotions, and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves."
--Kahlil Gibran


" 'I met a rat once in my garden,' I said and allowed Mr. Visconti to refill my glass. 'He was standing motionless so as not to be seen in the flower-bed. His fur looked fluffy like a bird who has blown out its feathers against the cold. He wasn't repulsive like a smooth rat. Without thinking I threw a stone at him. I missed him and I expected him to run, but instead he only limped away. One of his legs must have been broken. There was a hole in the hedge and he made for it very slowly. Once he stopped exhausted and peered over his shoulder at me. He looked rejected, and I was sorry for him. I couldn't throw another stone. He limped on to the hole and went through it. There was a cat in the next garden and I knew he didn't stand a chance. He had such dignity, going to his death. I felt ashamed of myself all that morning.'

" 'It does you credit,' Mr. Visconti said. 'Speaking as an honorary rat on behalf of other rats, I forgive the stone.' "
--Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt


"Relationships"
The legal children of a literary man
remember his ugly words to their mother.
He made them keep quiet and kissed them later.
He made them stop fighting and finish their supper.
His stink in the bathroom sickened their noses.
He left them with sitters in lonesome houses.
He mounted their mother and made them wear braces.
He fattened on fame and raised them thin.

But the secret sons of the same man
spring up like weeds from the seed of his word.
They eat from his hand and it is not hard.
They unravel his sweater and swing from his beard.
They smell in their sleep his ferns and roses.
They hunt the fox on his giant horses.
They slap their mother, repeating his phrases,
and swell in his sight and suck him thin.
--Mona Van Duyn


"He wouldn't simply allow things to happen to him anymore. He was alive, and for the first time since he'd woken out of the slumber of his past life, he felt it. It was not that he was painfully aware of each moment, as he had been upon waking from the operation. It seemed to him now that it was probably only the dying who saw the world with such precise and formal clarity as that, knowing it was already lost to them. No, this was something different, as if at some point in the hazy bacchanal of the night he had been handed back his life. A moment of reprieve, his heart bursting with a high-spirited hope, hammering its percussion in his chest."
--Nicole Krauss, Man Walks into a Room


"He could hear Donald saying something else but it didn't matter anymore what, because then and there it occurred to him that maybe the emptiness he'd been living with all this time hadn't really been emptiness at all, but loneliness gone unrecognized. How can a mind know how alone it is until it brushes up against some other mind? A single mark had web made, another person's memory imposed onto his mind, and now the magnitude of his own loss was impossible for Samson to ignore. It was breathtaking. He sank to his knees.

" 'Sammy? I said, are you there?'

"It was as if a match had been struck, throwing light on just how dark it was."
--Nicole Krauss


"Revelation"
Though there is no cure, he seeks one
In the discussions of the rabbis, in the shade
Of the eucalyptus, in the bones of St. Peter fish,
In the lyrics of Arik Einstein, in Gitanes.
Before sleep, uniform slumped
To the ground, pen capped, letter
To the prime minister sealed, he seeks a cure
In the expansive dark of the desert.
In the coffee house, enchanted by a folk singer.
In the shade of the eucalyptus, daydreaming.
Best to forget the offerings, how much oil and grain,
How many calves, how many pigeons.
Forget where the moon is in its cycle.
When the first set ends, when the shade moves,
He wills to carry the forgetting forward.
He wills to practice forgetting when he laces
His shoe, when he describes a recurring dream
To the prisoner who has a reputation
For his interpretations, when he gazes at a ship
On the horizon, when he wakes to the face
Facing his. This is the first time
He has seen her in morning light. What is the prayer?
She belongs to Christ, he remembers as he strokes
Her breast. He will forget this morning,
Like he forgot yesterday morning, their lying
Together late on a mattress issued by the state.
Though there is no cure, he seeks one
Where he works, in a novel, in the kiss
He receives from a rabbi of infinite patience.
He forgets fringes and his friends who have stepped
Outside for a smoke between sets. He forgets
Which of them has lately become a pacifist,
Which has purchased a ticket for the far east.
He wills to practice forgetting the scent
Of her hair, the taste of her tongue.
Though there is no cure, he seeks one
On the broken temple steps,
He seeks one in the morning light
Which reveals and reveals her face.
--Richard Chess


"A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until--'My God,' says the second man, 'I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn.' At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are, the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience...'Look, look" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer.' "
--Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead


GUIL: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.

ROS: Or just as mad.

GUIL: Or just as mad.

ROS: And he does both.

GUIL: So there you are.

ROS: Stark raving sane.
--Tom Stoppard


"Out of the void...a pipe is heard. One of the sailors has pursed his lips against a woodwind, his fingers and thumb governing, shall we say, the ventages, whereupon, giving it breath, let us say, with his mouth, it, the pipe, discourses, as the saying goes, most eloquent music. A thing like that, it could change the course of events."
--Tom Stoppard


"Home is watching the moon rise over the open, sleeping land and having someone you can call to the window, so you can look together. Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life."
--Stephen King