My Year of Rest and Relaxation--Ottessa Moshfegh
Nothing hurt Reva more than effortless beauty like mine. (10)
Life was fragile and fleeting and one had to be cautious, sure, but I would risk death if it meant I could sleep all day and become a whole new person. (26)
I wanted to hold on to the house the way you'd hold on to a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world. (64)
One of the bald men waved his hand dismissively and bit into a Danish. The crust flaked apart and fell down the front of his brown sweater-vest. He looked to me like a child molester. All those men did. But anyone would, in the right light, I thought--even I did. Even Reva. (131)
"This is like waiting for a train to hell," she whispered at some point, not to me directly, but up at the chapel ceiling. "I'm exhausted." Highway to hell. Slow road to hell. Express bus. Taxicab. Rowboat. First-class ticket. Hell was the only destination she ever used in her metaphors. (142)
...wondering if one day I'd be like her, a beautiful fish in a man-made pool, circling and circling, surviving the tedium only because my memory can contain only what is imprinted on the last few minutes of my life, constantly forgetting my thoughts. (213)
"It's really a matter of listening to your instincts. People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason. That's why drugs are so effective in curing mental illness--because they impair our judgment." (215)
A waste of space, he was saying.
But when I closed my eyes and pictured the house in that moment, it wasn't empty. The pastel depths of my mother's swollen closet lured me back. I went inside and peeked out between her hanging silk blouses at the rouge beige carpeting of her bedroom, the cream ceramic lamp on her nightstand. My mother. And then I traveled up the hall, through the French door, into my father's study: a dried plum pit on a tea saucer, his huge gray computer blinking neon green, a stack of papers he'd marked in red, mechanical pencils, yellow legal pads that flared open like daffodils. Journals and magazines and newspapers and manila folders, gummy pink erasers that struck me suddenly as somehow genital. Squat glass bottles of Canada Dry a quarter full. A chipped crystal dish of oxidizing paper clips, loose change, a crumpled lozenge wrapper, a button he had meant to sew back onto a shirt but never did. My father. (220)
I should have felt something--a pang of sadness, a twinge of nostalgia. I did feel a peculiar sensation, like oceanic despair that--if I were in a movie--would be depicted superficially as me shaking my head slowly and shedding a tear (221)
Up on my floor, I opened the garbage chute in the hallway and stuffed the roses down, but I kept the card. However much Ping Xi disgusted me--I didn't respect him or his art, I didn't want to know him, I didn't want him to know me--he had flattered me, and reminded me that my stupidity and vanity were still well intact. A good lesson. (225)
"Now just a moment while I pull your file." She shuffled papers on her desk. "I haven't seen you since December. Had a happy holiday?"
"It was all right."
"Did Santa bring you something nice this year?"
"This fur coat," I told her.
"Family ttime can put a stran on the mentally deranged." (232)
"Psychiatry has come a long way, into the spiritual realm. Into energies. There are deniers, certainly, but they all work for big oil." (233)
Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another. (286)
What was cowardly about the color yellow? Nothing. (287)
Life was fragile and fleeting and one had to be cautious, sure, but I would risk death if it meant I could sleep all day and become a whole new person. (26)
I wanted to hold on to the house the way you'd hold on to a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world. (64)
One of the bald men waved his hand dismissively and bit into a Danish. The crust flaked apart and fell down the front of his brown sweater-vest. He looked to me like a child molester. All those men did. But anyone would, in the right light, I thought--even I did. Even Reva. (131)
"This is like waiting for a train to hell," she whispered at some point, not to me directly, but up at the chapel ceiling. "I'm exhausted." Highway to hell. Slow road to hell. Express bus. Taxicab. Rowboat. First-class ticket. Hell was the only destination she ever used in her metaphors. (142)
...wondering if one day I'd be like her, a beautiful fish in a man-made pool, circling and circling, surviving the tedium only because my memory can contain only what is imprinted on the last few minutes of my life, constantly forgetting my thoughts. (213)
"It's really a matter of listening to your instincts. People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason. That's why drugs are so effective in curing mental illness--because they impair our judgment." (215)
A waste of space, he was saying.
But when I closed my eyes and pictured the house in that moment, it wasn't empty. The pastel depths of my mother's swollen closet lured me back. I went inside and peeked out between her hanging silk blouses at the rouge beige carpeting of her bedroom, the cream ceramic lamp on her nightstand. My mother. And then I traveled up the hall, through the French door, into my father's study: a dried plum pit on a tea saucer, his huge gray computer blinking neon green, a stack of papers he'd marked in red, mechanical pencils, yellow legal pads that flared open like daffodils. Journals and magazines and newspapers and manila folders, gummy pink erasers that struck me suddenly as somehow genital. Squat glass bottles of Canada Dry a quarter full. A chipped crystal dish of oxidizing paper clips, loose change, a crumpled lozenge wrapper, a button he had meant to sew back onto a shirt but never did. My father. (220)
I should have felt something--a pang of sadness, a twinge of nostalgia. I did feel a peculiar sensation, like oceanic despair that--if I were in a movie--would be depicted superficially as me shaking my head slowly and shedding a tear (221)
Up on my floor, I opened the garbage chute in the hallway and stuffed the roses down, but I kept the card. However much Ping Xi disgusted me--I didn't respect him or his art, I didn't want to know him, I didn't want him to know me--he had flattered me, and reminded me that my stupidity and vanity were still well intact. A good lesson. (225)
"Now just a moment while I pull your file." She shuffled papers on her desk. "I haven't seen you since December. Had a happy holiday?"
"It was all right."
"Did Santa bring you something nice this year?"
"This fur coat," I told her.
"Family ttime can put a stran on the mentally deranged." (232)
"Psychiatry has come a long way, into the spiritual realm. Into energies. There are deniers, certainly, but they all work for big oil." (233)
Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another. (286)
What was cowardly about the color yellow? Nothing. (287)