The Tower, and other pieces - 4. Maxims and other fragments II

.

"With writing I am like a swimmer at sea –

I must, or die."

"I had dreamed about this moment, and in my dreams I revealed to him those deep and secret things I knew I would one day tell him in person; esoteric things too sacred to be spoken in the daylight, but meant to be whispered far, far back in the chamber where only one small shaft of light is allowed to reach the minute golden statue of the sun god Amen – the same god whose name ends each and every Jewish and Christian prayer by the invocation of his holiness – a wish for light to strike deep in the hidden chambers of our hearts too."

[from my short story How the Heart Approaches What it Yearns]

"If Love be truly blind,

How can it ever find?

No, Love is determined,

Yet it knows how to bend.

So, Love may be blind,

But it's not hard to find –

The rub is making up Its mind!"

"Connection; what in the

Human universe is

More beautiful than that?"

"In writing, there are details,

And then there are aspects.

'The faded rose is dying.'

Faded is a detail; hope is an aspect."

"August in that part of the world is a magical time. The oppressive blast of desert heat can suddenly erupt into suspended dewdrops lingering in the shimmering air. The breeze shifts to come strongly from the southwest and smells like iodine. Dark clouds, sometimes black as night, come on this metallic-tasting wind, and sheets of solid gray rain track towards you with impending doom. People seeing this, rush indoors. They gather at windows, or on patios to wait the arrival of the 'gully washers,' and some are inclined to reach for hands at the climatic moment the drops fall like lead shot to ding the lean-to roofs and bounce off the ochre-clay dust that covers the ground."

[from my Simon Novella, Farther Along]

"The enemy is the feeling

That everything has been said."

"Airedales may be bad at being good,

But they so good at being bad!"

"Simon's act of heroism is in lying to a nun.

He does it to protect the innocent –

Himself and another."

[about my Simon Novella, Farther Along]

"An hour rolled by in blissful oblivion. Downstairs – as that hour began – Jason had found and pushed his way out to John and Sam, who with raised arms and throbbing hands punched the air and danced in soothing abandon. Now, the sweat pouring off his neck and soaking his dark t-shirt, caused John to bend over him, and with a long kiss, lift that shirt free and away from his loved one's body. John deftly tucked the shirttail end of it into Jason's corduroy waistband, just at the small of his back, to flap and dry behind him – and to pat the backside he found there once or twice. Jason threw his arms around John's neck, and as the sweaty and bare outer coverings of their in-sync hearts met, they – and all the crowd around them – continued to reverberate with the sustained and synchronized heartbeat of the music. Jason pulled his fiancé down into a prolonged and carefree kiss. John, loving the feel of peach fuzz, sensed that like the clouds bussing the sun on a perfect summer's day, all the eyes around them turned wan and longing to bask in that kiss' warmth."

[from my short story In Six Hours]

"Pride is what we think matters,

Once others have taken our dignity."

"Religion that is resource to connection is holy;

Most profoundly when the connection

Is to the common divine

In all of us."

_