Health + Youth

“…The ending reads like this: ‘All those weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.’

"One thing I love about this ending is that it’s very different from the endings to the other stories in the collection—stories that end with someone saying, ‘Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I’m fine.’ Or ‘And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.’ In fact, the last paragraph of the book reframes everything you’ve read before. You might have thought Jesus’ Son was bleak and maybe even a tad nihilistic at times, but then, with this coda, you realize that Fuckhead and everyone around him aren’t doomed; they’re doing what the rest of us are doing, which can more or less can be summarized as trying not to feel alone in this world.”
—Vendela Vida on “Jesus’ Son," Brick, Winter 2007

Paraphrasing: Perhaps living through these petty days will get us ready for the ones with teeth.
—Nope

I don’t know you
and you don’t know the half of it
Had a starring role
I was the bad guy who walked out
They say be careful where you aim
because where you aim you just might hit
You can hold on to something so tight
you’ve already lost it

Dragging me down
That’s not the way it used to be
You can’t even remember
what I’m trying to forget

“What sort of person ends up with someone like me? What sort of person finds that acceptable, year to year? We went on vacations and fielded each other’s calls and took turns reading Henk to sleep and let slip away the miracle that was there between us when we first came together. We hunkered down before the wind picked up. We modeled risk management for our son when instead we could have embraced the freefall of that astonishing Here, this is yours to hold. We told each other I think I know when we should’ve said Lead me farther through your amazing, astonishing interior.”
—"The Netherlands Lives with Water,“ Jim Shepard