spring is coming with a strawberry in the mouth

There is a perverse mood of mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored. What honest man on being casually taken for a housebreaker, does not feel rather tickled than vexed at the mistake?

"We must control ourselves. Be aware, perfectly lucid, give facts, feelings, and thoughts their appropriate form, not let ourselves be dragged along by them, like most people do." Sergio would tell me about this in his letters from Europe, before he returned, and then it was a matter of adjusting everything to human proportions, because excess is always more powerful than man; it was a personal discipline, almost a game, but when he spoke to me about anguish, that it would enter his breast and not allow him to think or breathe, because it was slowly invading him, possessing him through that initial wound, like a cold knife in the chest, I understood that I should apply everything he had taught me about form to that, and so between the two of us we would search for mild words to warm the wound, and we forbade ourselves any expression of emotion, because the first shout would set the beast free.

Where can you find maternal love? It is nothing but an illusion manufactured by men. Look, look, there, there is only blood, why is there such a thing?

When I meet his gaze, now bold and scathing again, I realize that he can’t help it. He will always be that way: he loves me just as I love him. Could it be otherwise? The love between a mother and a son is the ultimate romantic melodrama, simply because it cannot be consummated.

But an eight-year-old soul does not believe the arguments of reason. It shrinks into itself, quietly trembling and whimpering. An eight-year-old soul does not believe that this is the sound of a bell. Later, in daytime, it will believe this, but now, alone, defenseless, and in anguish, it does not know that this is a bell calling people to church. Who knows what this sound might be? It is sinister. If anguish and fear could be translated into sound, this is the sound they would make. If anguish and fear could be translated into color, it would be this uncertain, murky gray.

She had always hated morals. She rejected conclusions and the myths they create in a world that erupts suddenly like a volcano, like a landslide, like a silent shadow wandering in search of a crumbling body.

A man was murdered, but there was not a drop of blood in sight, not a moment's struggle, not even any faint moaning. It was a quiet, seductive sort of crime, carried out as gently as a lover's whisper. I felt no stirring of conscience, and found myself transfixed by the sheer beauty of what seemed to flicker like a bright and colorful painting before my eyes. When the woman said 'frightening things are always beautiful,' and 'demons are as beautiful as the gods,' the words sounded to me like they were describing not just those gemlike test tubes, but the woman herself. She is a heroine ripped from the pages of a detective novel, a devil incarnate; a demon who has long been nesting in the fantasy world inside my head. She is the fantasy I have longed for, now manifested in the real world and come to comfort me in my loneliness.

Bullfight thinks about Hornclaw's short fingernails, rough and cracked and chipped due to years of aggressive physical activity. They would become prettier if he pulled them out, one by one, causing flower petals to bloom at the tip of each finger. Showier. There's no such thing in the world as a red that is prettier than blood, even if it turns brown when oxidized. A red that is deep and cruel, precisely because it turns murky.

Her stomach rumbled with emptiness but now she did not trust herself to eat: what if she choked, drunk and alone here in her house? Who would take her in his arms and supply the lifesaving squeeze, dislodge what would otherwise surely kill her?

That feeling of hate - which they said was a sin - gave me a burst of joy so intense that I had to clench my fists and clamp my mouth shut to keep from singing and jumping up and down. As soon as I felt calm again, I timidly whispered I hate her to see whether the effect would repeat itself or whether a lightning bolt would strike my head. It was raining outside. My voice hit me like a fresh breeze that set me free from dread and dejection. How could those forbidden words give me so much energy? I would think about it later. Now I just had to repeat them out loud, so they would never again elude me: I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, I shouted, after making sure that the door was firmly shut. The carapace of depression broke off my body in pieces as my chest expanded, jolted by the energy of that feeling. Wrapped in my smock, I can't breathe anymore. What is it that's still squeezing my chest? Tearing off my smock and shirt, my hands found those tight strips 'so your breasts won't show,' which until that moment had felt like a second skin to me. A seemingly compliant skin that bound me with its reassuring whiteness. I took the scissors and cut them to shreds. I had to breathe. And finally naked - how long had it been since I'd felt my naked body? we even had to bathe with our shirts on - I rediscover my flesh. My released breasts explode beneath my palms and I stroke myself there on the floor, taking pleasure in the caresses which those magic words had triggered.

That's the power of ingrained moralism, which is also foolish pride, narcissism: it even makes you run from happiness.