Hope: A Tragedy

Kugel set off, the wind in what would have been, some years ago, his hair.

Still, something about the store gave Kugel hope. All these remedies—plants, scents, vitamins, lotions—at least they were trying. They, too, were fighting back. With elderberry, sure, and shark cartilage. But fighting back was fighting, wasn’t it?

Why did children always draw the sun smiling? he wondered. It’s a giant ball of fire, kids. It’s rage and fury. Whatever it’s doing, it isn’t fucking smiling.

he still couldn’t bring himself to throw them away, like old medicine bottles full of remedies that never worked but that you didn’t dare throw away on the off chance they would someday do what they promised, that you’d be stricken by chance with the one disease only they could cure, two weeks after they’d been pulled off the market.

when someone rises up and promises that things are going to be better, run. Hide. Pessimists don’t build gas chambers.

The breeze blew like a whatever.

You’re going to scare him, Kugel said, looking deep into her eyes. Somebody has to, Mother replied.

Here’s what I believe: we dream of utopia, but could never bear one. The impossibility of heaven is less a function of theology, in my opinion, than it is a problem of nature—our nature.

The food at Mother Earth’s was pure and natural and extraordinarily expensive. You paid more these days for the things you didn’t get—no sodium, no fructose, no corn syrup, no MSG, fat-free, carb-free, dye-free, wheatless, flourless, sugarless—and with each ingredient that wasn’t included, the price increased. A box of nothing—free of poisons, toxi