story: “The Blue Tree” author: Rick Bass year: 2014-ish where: sofa and sleepy note: This story encapsulates the impermanence of things, things like youth, places, and moments, but also–the pleasure of reading a short story. I’m reading and rereading Rick Bass this week while pondering the destruction of Joshua Tree National Park and other parks throughout the US, caused by human hubris and malice. a line: “He savors it, knowing it won’t always be this way. But […]
story: How She Remembers It author: Rick Bass year: 2006 where: Muscat airport note: father and daughter story a line: “And it was enough, was more than enough, to have that pink cotton candy, and to be driving on, and to simply imagine, rather than really remember, what it would have been like, riding the Ferris Wheel around and around, with the whole carnival to themselves.”
story: The Lives of Rocks author: Rick Bass year: 2006 where: Zanzibar, overlooking the Indian ocean and drinking Coke Light from a glass bottle note: This story masters a feeling of loneliness so profoundly as to kill it simultaneously, and connect us deeply with the sensitive and intelligent protagonist, unwell yet alive in her snowy mountain house, calling out for the–her–children in the valley. It is difficult to pick one quote. This story says so much […]
story: Pagans author: Rick Bass year: 2006 where: islands note: I might have ended up doing some needless research on diving bells… a line: “Even now, Richard thinks they missed each other by a hairs-breadth, that some sort of fate was deflected–though how or why or what, he cannot say. He thinks it might have been one of the closest misses in the history of the world.”
story: Her First Elk author: Rick Bass year: 2003 where: work, Saadiyat, between meetings note: I did not expect to like this story as much as I did. a line: “And once they had the elk overturned, Ralph emasculated it with his skinning knife, cutting off the ponderous genitals and tossing them farther into the field with no self-consciousness; it was merely the work that needed doing.”
