Thursday, March 08, 2007

You kill it before it kills you

"But she didn't believe in destiny. She refused to believe. Even if the game was rigged and the house always won, you could still go on playing, even as you lost"


"He had loved her. But it hadn't helped. He had loved her, but he hated himself more. Such suffering, so much pain. And he thought it made him hateful, as if suffering were shameful, disgusting. As if pain were a crime. Why didn't he tell her? She could have helped him if only he'd let her. She could have done something. But it wasn't that what he wanted. How hard he'd pushed her away. And then said, don't leave me, please God. You're all I have. He'd loved her, he had. And he knew she loved him, he knew it! But it wasn't enough. She couldn't have imagined such a thing was possible. Love wasn't enough. Love, it seemed, wasn't as big as she'd thought. There were bigger things. She felt her heart being crushed, it was going to pop like a grape. But she closed the door and sat back down at the table. The black book hadn't finished unfolding its black tale"


"Why does each man kill the thing he loves? she'd asked him. They lay on their picknick tables, shaded with eucalyptuses, guarded by giant agaves twelve feet across, fleshy and blue-gray and edged with thorns. Prehistoric. Her soft dress floating around her thighs as he drew her. I don't get it, why would you kill the thing you loved? The softness of his voice. Even now, under the deodars in the Court of Freedom, her feet in the grass over his silent body, she could hear his voice, clear but soft, you had to stop whatever you were doing, and lean close to hear it. And he had replied so quietly it took a few seconds for it to register.
"You kill it before it kills you"

Paint it Black, Janet Fitch

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi MonaLiza,

the first alinea says it all; the house always wins and that crude but true acknowledgement applies to hundreds and hundreds of life's endeavors. And especially if you're not the only one to decide or influence something that happens to/around you.