time & growing up

It’s not supposed to be good or complete. It’s okay that it feels like liquid not a solid, a vast and spreading goo I can’t manage, I told myself. It’s okay that I’m not sure what’s next, that it might be something unexpected.

-Lily King, Writers & Lovers

I walk to Salvatore’s Foreign Books on Mount Auburn Street. I worked there six years ago, in 1991. After Paris and before Pennsylvania and Albuquerque and Oregon and Spain and Rhode Island. Before Luke. Before my mother went to Chile with four friends and was the one who didn’t come back.

-Lily King, Writers & Lovers

And time is a curious thing. Most of us live for the time that lies right ahead of us. A few days, weeks, years. One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead. And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for.