We shelter in ourselves an angel
whom we constantly shock.
Jean Cocteau
Those who restrain desire do so
because theirs is weak enough
to be restrained.
William Blake
At the doughnut shop, I waited in line to buy a sesame bagel, toasted, with cream cheese, bacon and tomato.
A woman in an arm brace, the kind used for carpal tunnel syndrome, sat at a small table with an autistic man. He ate a powdered donut with jelly oozing out, and she played with three figs on a napkin.
The young man in front of me had a tattoo on his arm that read I Do The Wrong Things For The Right Reasons.
I might begin a How We Do It post with these lines that I heard Lorrie Moore say that night I went to hear her read:
How can it be described? How can any of it be described?
The trip and the story of the trip are always two different things.
This reminds me of the arm that emerged from the driver's window of
ReplyDeletethe car ahead of me to squeeze the
filling from a jelly doughnut before retreating when the light changed.
The trip and the story of the trip...that is a very interesting distinction!
ReplyDeleteAnd here we are, telling the story of the trip over and over again, trying to make sense of it.
ReplyDeleteProbably impossible, but oh how we try.
And the trip changes every time we tell the story of it, degree by degree, the way we add and subtract details every time we recall a memory, until we can no longer trust what happened at all, the trip itself is gone, and the story becomes the trip. It fascinates me.
ReplyDeleteLove that quote! They are different - but both wonderful in their own way.
ReplyDeleteOh, I like that line: "The trip and the story of the trip are always two different things." We're creative when we re-tell, or write - and not in a bad way; we're not lying. It's not the same in the telling of the story because we have been changed by the trip, and by the things which happened between the trip and the telling of the story.
ReplyDelete