“I often think that at the center of me is a voice that at last did split, a house in my heart so invaded with other people and their speech, friends I believed I was devoted to, people whose lives I can only guess at now, that it gives me the impression I am simply a collection of them, that they all existed for themselves, but had inadvertently formed me, then vanished. But, what: Should I have been expected to create my own self, out of nothing, out of thin, thin air and alone? ”
—Lorrie Moore (Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?)
“Certainly "safe" is what I am now—or am supposed to be. Safety is in me, holds me straight, like a spine. My blood travels no new routes, simply knows its way, lingers, grows drowsy and fond. Though there are times, even recently, in the small city where we live, when I’ve left my husband for a late walk, the moon out hanging upside down like some fantastical mistake—what life of offices and dull tasks could have a moon in it flooding the sky and streets, without its seeming preposterous—and in my walks, toward the silent corners, the cold mulchy smells, the treetops suddenly waving in a wind, I’ve felt an old wildness again. Revenant and drunken. It isn’t sexual, not really. It has more to do with adventure and escape, like a twisting in me like a bolt, some shadow fastened at the feet and gunning for the rest, though, finally, it has always stayed to one side as if it were some other impossible life and knew it, like a good dog, good dog, good dog. It has always stayed. ”
—Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
“What I learned at camp, from all the vesper readings, mostly, was that you didn’t give back to the same people who gave to you. “Let’s see,” I said, stalling. You didn’t give back to the same people at all. You gave to different people. And they, in turn, gave to someone different entirely. Not you. That was the sloppy economy of gift and love.”
—Lorrie Moore (Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?)You know when
you read a book and it just resonates with you? The words echo in your head far after you’ve finished it? Well, I just read the book “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital” by Lorrie Moore. It was actually a novel I had to read for class, and at first I didn’t think I was going to like it, but I ended up loving it. It’s sort of reminiscent of Judy Blume’s writing.
Anyways, there are just so many thoughts in there similar to mine. I really understood what the narrator was going through, the only difference was that she actually lived more than existed. But our feelings and self image concepts were on the same line.
Yeah. It’s a good book, just very relatable to me or somehow, how I wish my life was. Sort of. I don’t really know how to explain it.
Anyways, it’s a good book if anyone’s interested. Pretty much a fast read.
“You can wake from one dream only to find yourself plunged into yet another, like some endless rosary of the mind. When that happens, it is hard to glimpse what is not dream; the waking, undreamed world flies by you, in rushing flashes of light and air, in loud, quick dangerous spaces like those between the cars of a train. There’s nothing you can do. You walk in the sleep of yourself and wait. You wait for the train to pass.”
“I’ll wait for him, my heart in epilogue, knit and reknit, perhaps as it always has been. I’ll wait until I just can’t wait anymore.”
****
One of the most poignant books I’ve ever read. Please go out and pick up a copy of “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital.”
Probably the saddest book I’ve ever read too.
