Arcadia Quotes
"Bit is already moving when he wakes. It is February, still dark. He is five years old."
"His father is zipping Bit within his own jacket where it is warmest, and Abe’s heart beats a drum against Bit’s ear."
"The gong is calling them to Sunday Morning Meeting, somewhere. A river of people flows in the dark."
"Bit is tiny, a mote of a boy. He is often scooped up, carried. He doesn’t mind."
"God, says Handy, or the Eternal Spark, is in every human heart, in every piece of this earth."
"Remember the foundations of our community. Say them with me. The voices rise: Equality, Love, Work, Openness to the Needs of Everyone."
"In such perfect dawn, even the old man is beautiful, the blue of his beard under the newly luminous skin of his cheek, the softness in his jaw, the tufts in his ears touched golden."
"Hannah’s so deep in her thoughts that Bit is invisible."
"Abe gives Bit a tight smile. He says, Your mama’s okay, Little Bit. It’s just, this morning struck a deep chord with her because her own papa’s not doing so hot right now."
"In the hope of lulling him to sleep, Abe tells him the story of his birth, which Bit knows the innards of."
"You were born on the Caravan, Abe says softly, when we were a bunch of groupies, following Handy around for spiritual food."
"They play a game of Go Fish until Hannah returns, her face raw but calmer."
"The world moves in tight and squeezes him. He holds his face until the terror scuttles off and he can breathe again."
"All day, the secret icicle sits inside him, his own thing, a blade of cold, and it makes Bit feel brave to think of it."
"The sadness they feel begins to crack open only when Hannah drops the dirty breakfast dishes on the table and bursts into tears."
"He crouches for a while on the side of the brook, watching the frantic push of fish."
"He sees a bug that is smaller than a period on a page."
"You will grow. And one day things will not be so confusing."
"Don’t think that nobody knows you are not talking."
"You must remember, it is a rush, it is good energy."
"The world contracts in a friendly way around him."
"Even when you think you can’t bear it, you can bear it."
"Sometimes you have to let time carry you past your troubles."
"A community based on work, but I get to spend all day up in my fancy room, high as a kite, sticking my dick into any of the chicks who will lay down in front of me."
"I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me... That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower."
"I meant, of course, the worm in the age-old apple."
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n."
"It’s a sad sight, kids, the day a true believer loses his belief. Like a snake with his spine ripped out; all a sudden, he ain’t nothing but a worm."
"I know what you mean, Helle says, and whatever drug had tarred her voice is gone: it is now the crispest thing in the world."
"He feels his hope breathing and stretching, a living creature."
"The sun rises. In the window, it reflects him back to himself."
"The only people in the painting, yet, are essential."
"None of it is as beautiful as the place that lives in his head, of course."
"Sleepy yet? he says, and Grete says, No. Story."
"Once upon a time in Greece, Bit says, there was a beautiful girl named Helle and her brother, Phrixus."
"Go, she said; and did or didn't say, I can't come."
"I'm bad! says Grete and gives a wicked laugh."
"Every soul on the street is sunk within its body."
"His job, as he understands it, is to help his students see: to make them pay attention, slow down and appreciate what they’re doing."
"This weekend, he says to the eight faces arrayed at the table, you will go on a digital fast."
"The last time life felt like that to her was when she was a child, and the nostalgia for that time almost swallowed her up."
"The city seemed so loud, and now that she could hear its regular noises, she could sense other things, too."
"He is afraid of what would happen if he didn’t, the chemistry ebbing in the dark of his brain."
"I guess, she says. I think I’m lonely. Drinking too much."
"I’m fine, I’m fine, he says, and fine, fine repeats in his head as he escapes back into the chill."
"He feels himself flush and speaks to shake his embarrassment."
"There is nothing keeping him, that is, but Helle."
"Her invisible hands are fetters, her invisible eyes watching."
"The night draws into morning. Here they are forever, sitting at their tables, separate, alone."
"Bit has stopped looking for Helle. He never stops looking."
"He imagines them all young, the men shouldering down the street, holding their excitement for the evening in their guts, the women with their high heels tapping codes."
"During the bad nights, when deep sadness threatens to descend again, although he is ashamed at his selfishness, he pleads: Let Grete survive. Just let Grete make it."
"On the street, a trickle of rats moves silver in the moonlight."
"His relief ebbs as she climbs the steps and is replaced with a low anger."
"Shut up, Dad, she says. Can’t you see I’m so, so sad? I hate my life."
"She’s just warming up. She needs to take it out on somebody."
"He reaches out a hand, and the feel of her cheek under his fingertips returns the words to him."
"The scene plays over and over in his head as it has all night, in obsessive detail, repeating itself beyond his invention until it becomes truth."
"Apparently, Hannah said, I’m the damned one."
"They would have put the house in order, leaving the spoilable food out on the porch for the skunks and raccoons and starving deer."
"Only a few years ago, crisp heads of iceberg had rolled abundantly up from Mexico."
"If Abe were here, Bit might throttle him dead again: what appears to be sorrow is rage."
"The local florist is resourceful, faced with the exorbitance of imported goods."
"Grief as a low-grade fever. His sadness is a hive at the back of his head: he moves slowly to keep from being stung."
"Astrid arrives; Grete leaps from the chair outside Hannah’s door, shouting Mormor Astrid, I so hoped you’d come!"
"The radio reports a thousand dead in Java, sudden sickness, quarantine."
"Home is the same. In the pantry, the same rows of glass jars are full of the same beans and grains."
"He steers down a long straight road with his knees and rolls a hasty joint and smokes it."
"The dawn echoes its quiet in Bit’s city-dinned ears."
"His daughter has turned stranger in the dim hallway."
"He can see the moment when it became too hard for his parents to take care of one another."
"The doctor’s small bones under his hug; her violet scent hangs in the air."
"He wonders if they teach such detachment in medical school."
"He crumples Abe’s note, puts it in his pocket."
"A black smoke of Abe pours into the wind over the Pond."
"The courtyard is a strange place now, the air heavy and damp."
"It is all he can do to follow on the path where she’s gone, the underbrush still shaking with her passage."
"In one hand, Bit holds his life: his students, faces cracked with interest; the brownstone; the dates with lovely women who keep his attention for a night, a week, a month, until they drift away."
"She was almost angry with him that night, saying it was wasteful, asking if she was the kind of woman who’d wear pearls."
"Astrid waits beyond the point of comfort to speak."
"A sudden magnet, his tall, bony daughter with her pink hair in this sea of sweatpants and hunting camouflage."
"The sun is too high, the wind too strong, the Pond smashing against the bank."
"Some of the original Circenses Singers, old and flabby, sway under their newest puppets."
"The mourners mingle in the downstairs of Arcadia House."
"Hannah is an empty flour sack, heaped on a chair in the corner."
"The house is quiet, save for the gentle ticking of solar panels on the roof."
"He feels everything, the birds swinging on the currents of air, the early ferns uncurling, the creatures hunched somewhere, watching him."