Category: To Read

Cinco

26 Jan 2014 /

by Jose Luis Peixoto

a la hora de poner la mesa éramos cinco:
mi padre, mi madre, mis hermanas
y yo. después, mi hermana mayor
se casó. después, mi hermana menor
se casó. después, mi padre murió. hoy
a la hora de poner la mesa, somos cinco,
menos mi hermana mayor que está
en su casa, menos mi hermana menor
que está en su casa, menos mi madre viuda. cada uno
de ellos es un lugar vacío en esta mesa donde
como solo. pero estarán siempre aquí.
a la hora de poner la mesa, seremos siempre cinco.
mientras uno de nosotros esté vivo, seremos
siempre cinco.

‘So you used to know everything?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Everybody did. I told you. It’s nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play.’
‘To play what?’
‘This,’ she said. She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and shawls and clusters of bright stars.
Neil Gaiman

…you recognize the form already standing in the boat long before you reach the edge of the water. And it’s a face you’ve been longing to see for a very long time, and that face breaks into that old and long-loved grin in the way it always used to, and you don’t say anything at first, when the two of you come face to face. And you go home too.
Mallory Ortberg

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great end of triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

George Saunders

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