A Child Across the Sky by Jonathan Carroll

Author:Jonathan Carroll [Carroll, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780099709503
Google: rVpaAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 0099709503
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 1989-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

_I almost never sit in the same room with her. Too close. Too sad. From the looks on our faces, you wouldn't be able to figure out which of us was sadder, the pregnant woman or the dead man._

_Can I tell you about this? Do you mind? I'd be very grateful._

_Relationships begin with the delicate, scared use of big words you hope will apply someday soon: concern, commitment, love. Sasha and I were in the Hamburger Hamlet on Hollywood Boulevard when I said the first one, honesty._

_"I have to be honest with you."_

_Sasha looked quickly away and I thought, Uh-oh. When she looked back, she wore a suspicious, unhappy expression. Said I didn't owe her anything, she'd gotten something "out of the fuck" too. The word sounded silly. I took her hand, but instead of responding or squeezing mine, she only looked at our two clasped hands on the table and asked if my "honesty" meant I was telling her thanks for the roll last night but go away now._

_"No, my honesty meant admitting right away I'm in love with you."_

_"I wasn't ready for that. I'm still getting used to the idea of our sleeping together."_

"_Yes, get used to it. Get used to _me_."_

_We were each other's big, real hope and luckily recognized it fast.

When good fortune pulls up in front of you too quickly, it can make you suspicious. You hesitate before getting in. But both Sasha and I had been through enough lonely times to know there were only so many chances at contentment with another person. In other words, don't think too long before acting._

_In his _Letters to a Young Poet_, Rilke copies down one of his correspondent Kappus's poems and sends it back to the young man_.

_And now I am giving you this copy because I know that it is important and full of new experience to rediscover a work of one's own in someone else's handwriting. Read the poem as if you had never seen it before, and you will feel in your innermost being how very much it is your own._

_For some reason, the idea of this great man hand-copying a fan's poem and sending it to him has always touched me deeply. What generosity! Who would ever think of doing that?_

_But then I met Sasha, and she took much of what I was or believed and, putting her own stamp on it, handed it back to _me_ as if I had never seen it before. Perhaps that is what love is -- another's desire to return you to yourself enhanced by their vision, graced by their script_.

_I asked her to live with me._

_She looked at her feet. "I've never been very successful at that." Her smile was over just after it began to grow._

_I reached out and stroked her hair. "I don't care what your won-loss record is. I want you for what you are, Sash, not for what I want you to be."_

_"Me too. And that's the best place to begin._

_"When I was out walking Flea tonight, I saw this man on a big motorcycle with his girlfriend on the back.

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