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Nobody Had Forgotten Anything Here. In Berlin, You Had To Wrestle With The Past, You Had To Build On The Ruins, Inside Them. It Wasn't Like America Where We Scraped The Earth Clean, Thinking We Could Start Again Every Time.

-Janet Fitch

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Nobody Had Forgotten Anything

Janet Fitch

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Nobody Had Forgotten Anything Here. In Berlin, You Had To Wrestle With The Past, You Had To Build On The Ruins, Inside Them. It Wasn't Like America Where We Scraped The Earth Clean, Thinking We Could Start Again Every Time.

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Who Was I, Really? I Was The Sole Occupant Of My Mother's Totalitarian State, My Own Personal History Rewritten To Fit The Story She Was Telling That Day. There Were So Many Missing Pieces. I Was Starting To Find Some Of Them, Working My Way Upriver, Collecting A Secret Cache Of Broken Memories In A Shoebox.

We Recived Our Colouring From The Norsemen,hairy Savages Who Hacked Their Gods To Pieces And Hung The Flesh From Trees.we Are The Ones Who Sacked Rome.fear Only Feeble Old Age And Death In Bed.don't Forget Who You Are.

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She Kissed Me On The Mouth. Her Mouth Tasted Like Iced Coffee And Cardamom, And I Was Overwhelmed By The Taste, Her Hot Skin And The Smell Of Unwashed Hair. I Was Confused, But Not Unwilling. I Would Have Let Her Do Anything To Me.

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My Loneliness Tasted Like Pennies.

Life Should Always Be Like This. ... Like Lingering Over A Good Meal.

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Dawn Has A Way Of Casting A Pall On Any Night Magic.

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Never Apologize. Never Explain.

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We Parked In Back And Walked Down The Stairs With Their Polished Brass Railings, Past The Old-fashioned Kitchen. We Could See The Chefs Cooking. It Smelled Like Stew, Or Meat Loaf, The Way Time Should Smell, Solid And Nourishing.

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Although She Was Giddy With Exhaustion, Sleep Was A Lover Who Refused To Be Touched.

This Was The Wonderful Thing About Strangers. They Were Big Blank Pieces Of Paper, You Could Draw Watever You Like On Their Impresionable Surfaces

I Was Tired Of Men. Hanging In Doorways, Standing Too Close, Men Who Made You Love Them Then Changed Their Minds.

...the Men Eyed Her With The Automatic Mix Of Curiosity, Lust, And Aesthetic Judgment They Always Gave Young Women, Subject To Object, The Way You'd Stare At An Animal. She Pretended Not To Notice. To Remind Them She Was A Person Was Too Much Effort. Objects Bore No Guilt.

I Felt Like An Undeveloped Photograph That He Was Printing, My Image Rising To The Surface Under His Gaze.

How Easy I Was. Like A Limpet I Attached Myself To Anything, Anyone Who Showed Me The Least Attention.

I Imagined My Soul Taking In These Words Like Silicated Water In The Petrified Forest, Turning My Wood To Patterned Agate. I Liked It When My Mother Shaped Me This Way. I Thought Clay Must Feel Happy In The Good Potter's Hand.

Love's An Illusion. It's A Dream You Wake Up From With An Enormous Hangover And Net Credit Debt. I'd Rather Have Cash.

To Know I Was Beautiful In His Eyes Made Me Beautiful.

We Strive For Beauty And Balance, The Sensual Over The Sentimental.

I Took My Mother's Knife And Played Johnny Johnny Johnny On The Playhouse Floor. I Was Drunk, Stabbed Myself Every Few Throws. I Held My Hand Up And There Was Satisfaction At Seeing My Blood, The Way There Was When I Saw The Red Gouges Onmy Face That People Stared At And Turned Away. They Were Thinking I Was Beautiful, But They Were Wrong, Now They Could See How Ugly And Mutilated I Was.

It Wasn't Awful To Be Dead. The Stillness Would Almost Be A Relief. She Wouldn't Want Pain, She Wouldn't Want To Be Wounded Or Mutilated. She Could Never Shoot Herself Or Jump Off A Building. But Being Dead Wasn't Unthinkable.

If I Get Ideas Independently Of The Act Of Writing, They Never Really Fit. So For Me, There's No Hanging Out, Waiting For Inspiration.

I Emitted Some Civetlike Female Stink, A Distinct Perfume Of Sexual Wanting, That He Had Followed To Find Me Here In The Dark.

This Involves More Than I Can Discuss Here, But Do It. Read The Writers Of Great Prose Dialogue-people Like Robert Stone And Joan Didion. Compression, Saying As Little As Possible, Making Everything Carry Much More Than Is Actually Said. Conflict. Dialogue As Part Of An Ongoing World, Not Just Voices In A Dark Room. Never Say The Obvious. Skip The Meet And Greet.

She Would Buy Magic Every Day Of The Week. Love Me, That Face Said. I'm So Lonely, So Desperate. I'll Give You Whatever You Want.

She Should Think About Her Own Soul, What She Was Going To Do With This Funky Tattered Pond Dank Item. Dark And Stained, A Ruined Thing.

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Echo, The Death Of A Sound That Had Nowhere To Go But To Come Back.

In Our Exterior Life, We Can Be Only One Person. But In Our Imagination, We Can Be Anyone, Anywhere.

She Was Starting To Think There Might Be Such A Thing As Karma - That Repetition - Maybe You Lived Through The Same Thing Over And Over Until You Stopped Caring. Maybe Eventually It Got Less Intense, Until It Was Just Nothing.

 loneliness Is The Human Condition. Cultivate It. The Way It Tunnels Into You Allows Your Soul Room To Grow. Never Expect To Outgrow Loneliness. Never Hope To Find People Who Will Understand You, Someone To Fill That Space. An Intelligent, Sensitive Person Is The Exception, The Very Great Exception. If You Expect To Find People Who Will Understand You, You Will Grow Murderous With Disappointment. The Best You'll Ever Do Is To Understand Yourself, Know What It Is That You Want, And Not Let The Cattle Stand In Your Way.

Who Are You? The Band Sang. I Tried To Remember But I Really Couldn't Say.

She Would Be Half A Planet Away, Floating In A Turquoise Sea, Dancing By Moonlight To Flamenco Guitar.

I Wanted To Hear What She Was Saying. I Wanted To Smell That Burnt Midnight Again, I Wanted To Feel That Wind. It Was A Secret Wanting, Like A Song I Couldn't Stop Humming, Or Loving Someone I Could Never Have. No Matter Where I Went, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

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Wasn't That The Way It Always Was? You Didn't Know, You Couldn't Tell, You Just Let It Happen... Perhaps They Didn't Know Themselves. Sometimes The Line Was Very Fine.

She’s Not As Pretty As You,” I Said “but She’s A Simpler Girl,” My Mother Whispered.

I Felt Suddenly Cruel, Like I´d Told Dmall Children There Was No Tooth Fairy, That It Was Just Their Mom Sneaking Into Their Room After They Went To Bed.

Like A Kid Kicked Out Of Class. Humiliated And Free.

A Book's Flaws Make It Less Predictable.

I'm Always Looking For Something New And Interesting To Say. And It Can't Be Something I'm Directly Experiencing.

The Decor Bowled Me Over. Everywhere I Looked, There Was Something More To See. Botanical Prints, A Cross Section Of Pomegranates, A Passionflower Vine And Its Fruit. Stacks Of Thick Books On Art And Design And A Collection Of Glass Paperweights Filled The Coffee Table. It Was Enormously Beautiful, A Sensibility I'd Never Encountered Anywhere, A Relaxed Luxury. I Could Feel My Mother's Contemptuous Gaze Falling On The Cluttered Surfaces, But I Was Tired Of Three White Flowers In A Glass Vase. There Was More To Life Than That.

Just Because A Poet Said Something Didn’t Mean It Was True, Only That It Sounded Good.

The Sound Of Her Laughter Was Sticky As Sap, The Smell Of Night-blooming Jasmine Soft As A Milk Bath.

A Cliché Is Like A Coin That Has Been Handled Too Much. Once Language Has Been Overly Handled, It No Longer Leaves A Clear Imprint.

The Cake Had A Trick Candle That Wouldn't Go Out, So I Didn't Get My Wish. Which Was Just That It Would Always Be Like This, That My Life Could Be A Party Just For Me.

...i Was Tired Of Men. Hanging In Doorways, Standing Too Close, Their Smell Of Beer Or Fifteen-year-old Whiskey. Men Who Didn't Come To The Emergency Room With You, Men Who Left On Christmas Eve. Men Who Slammed The Security Gates, Who Made You Love Them And Then Changed Their Minds.

What Can I Say About Life? Do I Praise It For Letting You Live, Or Damn It For Allowing The Rest?

When You're A Little Kid, You Are Small, Your Life Is Small - And You're Terrifically Aware Of That. But When You Read, You Can Ride Arabian Horses Across The Desert, You Can Be A Dogsledder.

The Santa Anas Blew In Hot From The Desert, Shriveling The Last Of The Spring Grass Into Whiskers Of Pale Straw. Only The Oleanders Thrived, Their Delicate Poisonous Blooms, Their Dagger Green Leaves. We Could Not Sleep In The Hot Dry Nights, My Mother And I.

Nobody Had Forgotten Anything Here. In Berlin, You Had To Wrestle With The Past, You Had To Build On The Ruins, Inside Them. It Wasn't Like America Where We Scraped The Earth Clean, Thinking We Could Start Again Every Time.

There Is No God, There Is Only What You Want.

There Is No God

Aquamarines Grew With Emeralds, Claire Told Me. But Emeralds Were Fragile And Always Broke Into Smaller Pieces, While Aquamarines Were Stronger, Grew In Huge Crystals Without Any Trouble, So They Weren't Worth As Much. It Was The Emerald That Didn't Break That Was The Really Valuable Thing.

There Used To Be A Category Called Women's Fiction - Meaning Not Too Rude, Not Too Much Sex, A Bit Domestic And Internal. Women Have Changed So Much. We're So Varied. And We've Become More Interested In The Same Varied Experience In Fiction.

What Can She Possibly Teach You, Twenty Seven Names For Tears?

Pick A Better Verb. Most People Use Twenty Verbs To Describe Everything From A Run In Their Stocking To The Explosion Of An A-bomb.

Darkness Coiled Between What He Wanted Them To Believe And The Self He Despised. It Only Made Him More Alone. How Could You Save Someone When He Didn't Let You Kno Him? What A Waste. The Beauty He Murdered In This Place. He Could Never See What He Had, Only What He Failed To Achieve.

They Wanted The Real Mother, The Blood Mother, The Great Womb, Mother Of Fierce Compassion, A Woman Large Enough To Hold All The Pain, To Carry It Away. What We Needed Was Someone Who Bled...mother's Big Enough, Wide Enough For Us To Hide In...mother's Who Would Breathe For Us When We Could Not Breathe Anymore, Who Would Fight For Us, Who Would Kill For Us, Die For Us.

He Reminded Me Of Someone Who Put Your Fingers In The Door And Smiled And Talked To You While He Smashed Them.

History Only Existed In The Human Mind, Subject To Endless Revision. 'each Man Kills The Thing He Loves'-oscar Wilde. You Kill It Before It Kills You, But He Was Wrong. You Killed It By Accident. Thinking You Were Doing Something Else. Shattering, When All You Wanted To Do Was Keep It Safe.

Dawn Tinted The Darkness Like Water Ink.

How Vast Was A Human Being's Capacity For Suffering. The Only Thing You Could Do Was Stand In Awe Of It. It Wasn't A Question Of Survival At All. It Was The Fullness Of It, How Much Could You Hold, How Much Could You Care.

What Happened To A Dream Without A Dreamer?

It Was Her First Book, An Indigo Cover With A Silver Moonflower, An Art Nouveau Flower, I Traced My Finger Along The Silver Line Like Smoke, Whiplash Curves. ... I Touched The Pages Her Hands Touched, I Pressed Them To My Lips, The Soft Thick Old Paper, Yellow Now, Fragile As Skin. I Stuck My Nose Between The Bindings And Smelled All The Readings She Had Given, The Smell Of Unfiltered Cigarettes And The Espresso Machine, Beaches And Incense And Whispered Words In The Night. I Could Hear Her Voice Rising From The Pages. The Cover Curled Outward Like Sails.

That Was The Thing About Words, They Were Clear And Specific-chair, Eye, Stone- But When You Talked About Feelings, Words Were Too Stiff, They Were This And Not That, They Couldn't Include All The Meanings. In Defining, They Always Left Something Out.

She Was Such A Bad Actress. She Never Said Her Lines Rite, It Was Something Perverse In Her Nature. And Wat Was Her Line Anyway?

It's Such A Liability To Love Another Person.

Remember It All, Every Insult, Every Tear. Tattoo It On The Inside Of Your Mind. In Life, Knowledge Of Poisons Is Essential. I've Told You, Nobody Becomes An Artist Unless They Have To.

The Story Of Her Life. God Gave You Everything Just To Take It Away. Just So You Knew Exactly What You Were Missing.

A Womans Mistakes Are Different From A Girls

But That Was The Thing About Zero. Its Weakness. Even If Zero Had Taken Over The Entire Universe, The Biggest Fascist Of All, One Tiny Gesture Could Deny It. One Footprint, One Atom. You Didn't Have To Be A Genius. You Didn't Even Have To Know That Was What You Were Doing. You Made A Mark. You Changed Something. It Said, "a Human Being Passed Here." And Changed Zero To One.

Take My Advice. Stay Away From All Broken People.

No Matter Where I Was, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

No Matter How Unappealing, Each Of Them Imagines He Is Somehow Worthy.

Loneliness Is The Human Condition. Cultivate It. The Way It Tunnels Into You Allows Your Soul Room To Grow.

My Hatred Gives Me Strength.

What Was The Point In Such Loneliness Among People. At Least If You Were By Yourself, You Had A Good Reason To Be Lonely.

We Have No Home, She Told Me. I Am Your Home.

It's Their Skins I'm Peeling," She Said. "the Skins Of The Insipid Scribblers, Which I Graft To The Page, Creating Monsters Of Meaninglessness.

I Thought Clay Must Feel Happy In The Good Potter's Hand.

Her Hatred Glittered Irresistibly. I Could See It, The Jewel, It Was Sapphire, It Was The Cold Lakes Of Norway.

I Could Hear The Icy Winds Of Sweden, But He Didn't Seem To Feel The Chill.

The Stupid Things You Say In The Rain, That Can't Ever Be Washed Away.

The Pearls Weren't Really White, They Were A Warm Oyster Beige, With Little Knots In Between So If They Broke, You Only Lost One. I Wished My Life Could Be Like That, Knotted Up So That Even If Something Broke, The Whole Thing Wouldn't Come Apart.

I Wondered Why It Had To Be So Poisonous. Oleanders Could Live Through Anything, They Could Stand Heat, Drought, Neglect, And Put Out Thousands Of Waxy Blooms. So What Did They Need Poison For? Couldn't They Just Be Bitter? They Weren't Like Rattlesnakes, They Didn't Even Eat What They Killed. The Way She Boiled It Down, Distilled It, Like Her Hatred. Maybe It Was A Poison In The Soil, Something About L.a., The Hatred, The Callousness, Something We Didn't Want To Think About, That The Plant Concentrated In Its Tissues. Maybe It Wasn't A Source Of Poison, But Just Another Victim.

I Wandered Through The Stacks, Running My Hands Along The Spines Of The Books On The Shelves, They Reminded Me Of Cultured Or Opinionated Guests At A Wonderful Party, Whispering To Each Other.

My House Is Modern, But I Like My Writing Room To Be Old Fashioned. I Write On A Little Wooden Secretary Desk.

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Richard Nelson Bolles

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