Sublime

and I wondered what would happen if I stopped trying to get back up. Just let my body go. Would I be washed out to sea? The sharks would eat my limbs and organs. Little fish would feed on my fingertips. My beautiful white bones would fall to the bottom of the ocean, where anemones would grow upon them like flowers. Pearls would rest in my eye socke

A name, Ruth thought, could be either a ghost or a portent depending upon which side of time you were standing.

Hokusai

And we knew it would only be a matter of time until all traces of us were gone.

She knew the pages had once been filled because on at least two occasions she had checked, riffling through to see if the girl’s handwriting had persisted to the end of the book, and indeed it had. The words had once been there, she was sure of it, and now they weren’t. What had happened to them?

Time interacts with attention in funny ways.

Commodified Hawaiian culture—the “luau,” the “hula girl,” and “aloha”—became part of the American vernacular and everyday life.

EVERY EVENING, at dusk, we began burning our things: old bank statements and diaries, Buddhist family altars, wooden

That’s what would have happened to your freezer bag if it hadn’t escaped.