Here are seven passages taken from my book “And Let It Remain”:

He had chanced to utter things that he instantly regretted, that he knew he never meant, words that merely spoke themselves – that is language sometimes.

He had seen her eyes close. He saw she had lost herself in a possibility, a possibility his words had only suggested, but not foretold; that he might get to a point where he could not stand her – something he immediately said would never happen. But the possibility had been spoken, and people live in possibility. 

–

The endless distractions: a glass of tea here, a cigarette there; a nap, a walk, an endless stretch of daydreams; songs, food, drinks, TV shows, movies; idle talk, video games, gossip. The restlessness that gives way to movement, the movement that gives way to restlessness, and somewhere, floating between, a stillness that seems ephemeral, but only because one tries to hold on to it.

–

She morphed into a cloud, floating in absence, through obscurity, no one there, and yet, there she remained. 

–

She was gone now, but his memories were so painfully vivid; they conjured up her ghost around the buildings, along the pathways and sidewalks, in the forest, and on the hills across the fields. The path went by her room, the path he had to walk every day to get to town. He walked the path daily, and every time he approached her building, his heart would pound, his stomach would drop, and his eyes would try and shoot out from their sockets toward its direction. He always looked, and it always made him feel, and the feeling always made him think, and his thoughts always made him wonder, and his wonder always made him afraid, afraid he had lost her. And with this, the challenge of feeling love at its extreme limits became a delicate test of teetering on the brink of sanity, unsure of whether the disintegration of his mind that seemed to be taking place was, at heart, some divine and cleansing purgation, or the effect of some disastrous misfortune to his psyche, or both. 

–

How does one survive the challenges associated with the mysteries of life? By that I mean the great wonders and the unfathomable beauty that survives without reason or a lasting explanation, always as an incomplete answer, like a divided number with a constant remainder. Do we survive by taking pleasure in the mystery itself, finding peace in the fact that it is a mystery with no complete answer? By indulging in the mystery, by accepting that unanswerable quality as somehow the source of its majesty? What is an answer after all? Does knowing how a flower grows increase the splendor of watching it bloom?

–

The patience with which he heard her speak to her child was enough to impress upon him the conviction that here was a woman confident enough to give all that she could without expectation of anything in return; there was no residue of burden whatsoever placed upon her son that might make him feel responsible for his mother’s happiness or self-worth. Here was devotion given life and made manifest, away from the hollow talk of good intentions and exalted promises, speech which counts for nothing until animated by the moment-to-moment sacrifice that constitutes the worship of living love. 

–

“What bothers me is the hurry and the pace at which we live. We rush through life, creating unpardonable destinies, and then we get to the end, and want it all back.”

The entire book can be found here: