Sy Safransky

The Full Catastrophe

Unless you show up to write, you don’t get to experience the heartache and the joy of writing; you don’t get to drop into a place without words and then, miraculously, find just the right words for what you discover there.

November 2006

If terrorism is a threat to democracy, so is errorism: refusing to admit blunders; twisting other people’s words; consistently making statements known to be untrue.

October 2006

The rain hits the tin roof, a sound Norma loves. Too loud, I insist, unable to sleep. What do you call the rain when two people can’t agree what the rain sounds like?

September 2006

My daughter Mara has a suspicious lump in her breast; a biopsy is scheduled for later this week. If the lump turns out to be benign, I can go back to worrying about how far behind I am in my work or about the accelerated pace of global warming.

August 2006

I didn’t want to cry, so the sadness stayed in my body. Then, instead of feeling sad, I felt anxious, like a bird trapped inside a house whose windows are boarded up.

July 2006

When I went running this morning, I thought to myself, Not bad for a man my age. Then, as clearly as if she were running beside me, I heard a recently departed friend whisper: Enough already. The body is just an address. Nice house. Lovely neighborhood. Congratulations. Just an address.

Friend Of The Sun

May 2006

What a big appetite fear has. What a succulent morsel I was last night.

April 2006

This morning, I came across these words by Ramana Maharshi: “God’s grace is the beginning, the middle, and the end. When you pray for God’s grace, you are like someone standing neck deep in water and yet crying for water. It is like saying that someone neck deep in water feels thirsty or that a fish in water feels thirsty or that water feels thirsty.”

October 2005

“We can’t forget,” my friend C. said. “Forgetting what happened to the people of New Orleans will exact too high a price. We can’t just send off a check, and cry again over the images, and pretend there’s nothing left for us to do.”