Later, Sylvia tells me her end of the table was even worse. The guy in the Gore-Tex jacket was going on and on about transhumanism and how we would soon shed these burdensome bodies and become part of the singularity. “These people long for immortality but can’t wait ten minutes for a cup of coffee,” she says.
Quotes from Weather
by Jenny Offill
Quotes from Weather Jenny Offill
In the first class I ever took with Sylvia, she told us about assortative mating. Meaning like with like—depressive with depressive. The problem with assortative mating, she said, is that it feels perfectly correct when you do it. Like a key fitting into a lock and opening a door. The question being: Is this really the room you want to spend your life in?
There was once a race of mythic arctic dwellers called the Hyperboreans. Their weather was mild, their trees bore fruit all year, and no one was ever sick. But after a thousand years, they grew bored of this life. They decked themselves in garlands and leaped off the cliffs into the sea.
”What is the core delusion?” Margot asks the class, but nobody knows the right answer, and she doesn’t bother to tell us.
The dentist gave me something so I won’t grind my teeth in my sleep. I consider putting it in, decide against it. My husband is under the covers reading a long book about an ancient war. He turns out the light, arranges the blankets so we’ll stay warm. The dog twitches her paws softly against the bed. Dreams of running, of other animals. I wake to the sound of gunshots. Walnuts on the roof, Ben says. The core delusion is that I am here and you are there.
It was the same after 9/11, there was that hum in the air. Everyone everywhere talking about the same thing. In stores, in restaurants, on the subway. My friend met me at the diner for coffee. His family fled Iran one week before the Shah fell. He didn’t want to talk about the hum. I pressed him though. Your people have finally fallen into history, he said. The rest of us are already here.