Christian Molenaar

Category: Nothings

  • November 4

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    I am no doubt occupied with weighty thoughts, I am on the way to certain discoveries, an invincible power bears me toward a luminary which shone at an early age on the darkness of my moral life; but what name can I give to the power that ties my hands and shuts my mouth, and Read more

  • Saving Daylight

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    Twilight shone through the spaces between these structures and illuminated their soaring peaks with an amber light, the hue of setting suns and fading worlds. Read more

  • El Día de los Difuntos

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    Towards sunset on the Day of the Dead in November 1939, two men in white flannels sat on the main terrace of the Casino drinking anís. Read more

  • Wedding Party

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    Where did you hear me in this cold… Where did I bring names and contra-names into the story, into this account out of poverty, my specter… My Word picked sheep, pigs, whipped oxen in calf, drank from the back of the cow… in thousand-year-old books my father’s plow scarred the stars back and forth… Read more

  • The Country Will Bring Us No Peace

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    Even such is time that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust: Who in the dark and silent grave When we have wandred all our ways Shuts up the story of our days And from which earth and grave and dust The Lord Read more

  • Blackberries

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    Out under yellow bulbs at a long weathered table, Zoyd found himself trying to help Flash with the shock of meeting so many in-laws in one place, both men from time to time looking around fearfully, like unarmed visitors in a jungle clearing, as out beyond this particular patch of light Traverses and Beckers went Read more

  • Mambo No. 5

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    The match could not have been more perfect: our two closest friends in the world — my best friend of fifteen years, your former college roommate, both simultaneously single at last. After half a decade of half-secret crushes, missed connections and ill-timed rendezvous, the timing was finally right. And a month later it was over. Read more

  • A Dense Microcosm

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    The State of the Union according to Gary Indiana, who died today of cancer at the age of 74. Read more

  • Infinite Explosions

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    Robert Coover died two weeks ago. My dear wife took the opportunity to pick up an early anniversary/consolation gift for me, courtesy of Lorne Bair: a copy of The Water Pourer, an excised chapter from Coover’s first novel The Origin of the Brunists published on its own in a highly limited edition of 350 copies. Read more

  • Soon We’ll Be Eating

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    The longest word in the Greek language is λοπαδο­τεμαχο­σελαχο­γαλεο­κρανιο­λειψανο­δριμυπο­τριμματο­σιλφιο­καραβομελιτο­κατα­κεχυμενο­κιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττο­περιστεραλεκτρυονοπτο­κεφαλλιο­κιγκλοπελειο­λαγῳοσιραιο­βαφητραγανο­πτερύγων. Read more

Thought:

“

This is an appealing story.

One day, a hermit brother about to leave for town went to a brother who lived nearby and who had continual compunction. He said to his fervent neighbor, “Please do me the kindness, brother, of taking care of my garden until my return.” The other replied, “Believe me, brother, I will do my best not to neglect it.” After the brother’s departure, he said to himself, Now take care of this garden. And from evening until dawn he stood in psalmody, ceaselessly shedding tears. He prayed the same way for the entire day. Coming home late, the brother found that hedgehogs had ravaged his garden.

He said, “God forgive you, brother, for not taking care of my garden.”

The other answered, “God knows I did my best to keep it, and I hope through God’s mercy that the little garden will bear fruit.”

The brother said, “But it has been completely destroyed.”

The other replied, “I know, but I have confidence in God that it will flower again.”

But he was speaking of his continual tears, the weeping for one’s sins in the hope of salvation, and of the garden of his heart, watered by him and in full flower.

“

Joy Williams | “Hedgehog”

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