A powerful distillation of the experience of understanding and acceptance, and of art’s triumph over death, Falling Out of Time is part play, part prose, and pure poetry. As Grossman’s characters ultimately find solace and hope through their communal acts of mourning, readers will find comfort in their clamorous vitality, and in the gift of storytelling—a realm where loss is not an absence, but a life force in its own right.
A powerful distillation of the experience of understanding and acceptance, and of art’s triumph over death, Falling Out of Time is part play, part prose, and pure poetry. As Grossman’s characters ultimately find solace and hope through their communal acts of mourning, readers will find comfort in their clamorous vitality, and in the gift of storytelling—a realm where loss is not an absence, but a life force in its own right.
Paperback
-
SHIP THIS ITEMIn stock. Ships in 1-2 days.PICK UP IN STORE
Your local store may have stock of this item.
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
A powerful distillation of the experience of understanding and acceptance, and of art’s triumph over death, Falling Out of Time is part play, part prose, and pure poetry. As Grossman’s characters ultimately find solace and hope through their communal acts of mourning, readers will find comfort in their clamorous vitality, and in the gift of storytelling—a realm where loss is not an absence, but a life force in its own right.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780345805850 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 12/02/2014 |
| Series: | Vintage International |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.10(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
town chronicler: As they sit eating dinner, the man’s face suddenly turns. He thrusts his plate away. Knives and forks clang. He stands up and seems not to know where he is. The woman recoils in her chair. His gaze hovers around her without taking hold, and she—wounded already by disaster—senses immediately: it’s here again, touching me, its cold fingers on my lips. But what happened? she whispers with her eyes. Bewildered, the man looks at her and speaks:
—I have to go.
—Where?
—To him.
—Where?
—To him, there.
—To the place where it happened?
—No, no. There.
—What do you mean, there?
—I don’t know.
—You’re scaring me.
—Just to see him once more.
—But what could you see now? What is left to see?
—I might be able to see him there. Maybe even talk to him?
—Talk?!
town chronicler: Now they both unfold, awaken. The man speaks again.
—Your voice.
—It’s back. Yours too.
—How I missed your voice.
—I thought we . . . that we’d never . . .
—I missed your voice more than I missed my own.
—But what is there? There’s no such place. There doesn’t exist!
—If you go there, it does.
—But you don’t come back. No one ever has.
—Because only the dead have gone.
—And you—how will you go?
—I will go there alive.
—But you won’t come back.
—Maybe he’s waiting for us.
—He’s not. It’s been five years and he’s still not. He’s not.
—Maybe he’s wondering why we gave up on him so quickly, the minute they notified us . . .
—Look at me. Look into my eyes. What are you doing to us? It’s me, can’t you see? This is us, the two of us. This is our home. Our kitchen. Come, sit down. I’ll give you some soup.
man:
Lovely—
So lovely—
The kitchen
is lovely
right now,
with you ladling soup.
Here it’s warm and soft,
and steam
covers the cold
windowpane—
town chronicler: Perhaps because of the long years of silence, his hoarse voice fades to a whisper. He does not take his eyes off her. He watches so intently that her hand trembles.
man:
And loveliest of all are your tender,
curved arms.
Life is here,
dear one.
I had forgotten:
life is in the place where you
ladle soup
under the glowing light.
You did well to remind me:
we are here
and he is there,
and a timeless border
stands between us.
I had forgotten:
we are here
and he—
but it’s impossible!
Impossible.
woman:
Look at me. No,
not with that empty gaze.
Stop.
Come back to me,
to us. It’s so easy
to forsake us, and this
light, and tender
arms, and the thought
that we have come back
to life,
and that time
nonetheless
places thin compresses—
man:
No, this is impossible.
It’s no longer possible
that we,
that the sun,
that the watches, the shops,
that the moon,
the couples,
that tree-lined boulevards
turn green, that blood
in our veins,
that spring and autumn,
that people
innocently,
that things just are.
That the children
of others,
that their brightness
and warmness—
woman:
Be careful,
you are saying
things.
The threads
are so fine.
man:
At night people came
bearing news.
They walked a long way,
quietly grave,
and perhaps, as they did so,
they stole a taste, a lick.
With a child’s wonder
they learned they could hold
death in their mouths
like candy made of poison
to which they are miraculously
immune.
We opened the door,
this one. We stood here,
you and I,
shoulder to shoulder,
they
on the threshold
and we
facing them,
and they,
mercifully,
quietly,
stood there and
gave us
the breath
of death.
woman:
It was awfully quiet.
Cold flames lapped around us.
I said: I knew, tonight
you would come. I thought:
Come, noiseful void.
man:
From far away,
I heard you:
Don’t be afraid, you said,
I did not shout
when he was born, and
I won’t shout now either.
woman:
Our prior life
kept growing
inside us
for a few moments longer.
Speech,
movements,
expressions.
man and woman:
Now,
for a moment,
we sink.
Both not saying
the same words.
Not bewailing him,
for now,
but bewailing the music
of our previous life, the
wondrously simple, the
ease, the
face
free of wrinkles.
woman:
But we promised each other,
we swore to be,
to ache,
to miss
him,
to live.
So what is it now
that makes you
suddenly tear away?
man:
After that night
a stranger came and grasped
my shoulders and said: Save
what is left.
Fight, try to heal.
Look into her eyes, cling
to her eyes, always
her eyes—
do not let go.
woman:
Don’t go back there,
to those days. Do not
turn back your gaze.
man:
In that darkness I saw
one eye
weeping
and one eye
crazed.
A human eye,
extinguished,
and the eye
of a beast.
A beast half
devoured in the predator’s mouth,
soaked with blood,
insane,
peered out at me from your eye.
woman:
The earth
gaped open,
gulped us
and disgorged.
Don’t go back
there, do not go,
not even one step
out of the light.
man:
I could not, I dared not
look into your eye,
that eye of
madness,
into your noneness.
woman:
I did not see you,
I did not see
a thing,
from the human eye
or the eye
of the beast.
My soul was uprooted.
It was very cold then
and it is cold
now, too.
Come to sleep,
it’s late.
man:
For five years
we unspoke
that night.
You fell mute,
then I.
For you the quiet
was good,
and I felt it clutch
at my throat. One after
the other, the words
died, and we were
like a house
where the lights
go slowly out,
until a somber silence
fell—
woman:
And in it
I rediscovered you,
and him. A dark mantle
cloaked the three of us,
enfolded us
with him, and we were mute
like him. Three embryos
conceived
by the bane—
man:
And together
we were born
on the other side,
without words,
without colors,
and we learned
to live
the inverse
of life.
(silence)
woman:
See how
word by word
our confiding
is attenuated, macerated,
like a dream
illuminated
by a torch. There was
a certain miracle
within the quietude,
a secrecy
within the silence
that swallowed us up
with him. We were silent there
like him, there we spoke
his tongue.
For words—
how does the drumming
of words voice
his death?!
town chronicler: In the hush that follows her shout, the man retreats until his back touches the wall. Slowly, as if in his sleep, he spreads both arms out and steps along the wall. He circles the small kitchen, around and around her.
man:
Tell me,
tell me
about us
that night.
woman:
I sense something
secret: you are tearing off
the bandages
so you may drink
your blood, provisions
for your journey to there.
man:
That night,
tell me
about us
that night.
woman:
You
circle
around me
like a beast
of prey. You close
in on me
like a nightmare.
That night, that
night.
You want to hear about
that night.
We sat on these chairs,
you there, me here.
You smoked. I remember
your face came
and went in the smoke,
less and less
each time. Less
you, less
man.
man:
We waited
in silence
for morning.
No
morning
came.
No
blood
flowed.
I stood up, I wrapped you
in a blanket,
you gripped my hand, looked
straight into my eyes: the man
and woman
we had been
nodded farewell.
woman:
No
wafted dark
and cold
from the walls,
bound my body,
closed and barred
my womb. I thought:
They are sealing
the home that once
was me.
man:
Speak. Tell me
more. What did we say?
Who spoke first? It was very quiet,
wasn’t it? I remember breaths.
And your hands twisting
together. Everything else
is erased.
woman:
Cold, quiet fire burned
around us.
The world outside shriveled,
sighed, dwindled
into a single dot,
scant,
black,
malignant.
I thought: We must
leave.
I knew: There’s nowhere
left.
man:
The minute
it happened,
the minute
it became—
woman:
In an instant we were cast out
to a land of exile.
They came at night, knocked on our door,
and said: At such and such time,
in this or that place, your son
thus and thus.
They quickly wove
a dense web, hour
and minute and location,
but the web had a hole in it, you
see? The dense web
must have had a hole,
and our son
fell
through.
town chronicler: As she speaks these words, he stops circling her. She looks at him with dulled eyes. Lost, arms limp, he faces her, as if struck at that moment by an arrow shot long ago.
woman:
Will I ever again
see you
as you are,
rather than as
he is not?
man:
I can remember
you without
his noneness—your innocent,
hopeful smile—and I can remember
myself without his noneness. But not
him. Strange: him
without his noneness, I can no longer
remember. And as time goes by
it starts to seem as though
even when he was,
there were signs
of his noneness.
woman:
Sometimes, you know,
I miss
that ravaged,
bloody
she.
Sometimes I believe her
more than I believe
myself.
man:
She is the reason I take
my life
in your hands and ask
you a question
I myself
do not understand:
Will you go with me?
There—
to him?
woman:
That night I thought:
Now we will separate. We cannot live
together any longer. When I tell you
yes,
you will embrace
the no, embrace
the empty space
of him.
man:
How will we cleave together?
I wondered that night.
How will we crave each other?
When I kiss you,
my tongue will be slashed
by the shards of his name
in your mouth—
woman:
How will you look into my eyes
with him there,
an embryo
in the black
of my pupils?
Every look, every touch,
will pierce. How will we love,
I thought that night.
How will we love, when
in deep love
he was
conceived.
man:
The
moment
it happened—
woman:
It happened? Look
at me, tell me:
Did it happen?
man:
And it billows up
abundantly,
an endless
wellspring. And I
know—as long as
I breathe,
I will draw
and drink and drip
that blackened
moment.
woman:
Mourning condemns
the living
to the grimmest solitude,
much like the loneliness
in which disease
enclothes
the ailing.
man:
But in that loneliness,
where—like soul
departing body—
I am torn
from myself, there
I am no longer alone,
no longer alone,
ever since.
And I am not
just one there,
and never will be
only one—
woman:
There I touch his
inner self,
his gulf,
as I have
never touched
a person
in the world—
man:
And he,
he also touches
me from
there, and his touch—
no one has ever
touched me in that way.
(silence)
woman:
If there were such a thing
as there,
and there isn’t,
you know—but if
there were,
they would have already gone
there.
One of everyone would have
got up and gone. And how
far will you go,
and how will you know
your way back,
and what if you don’t
come back, and even if
you find it—
and you won’t,
because it isn’t—
if you find it, you will not
come back,
they will not let you
back, and if you do
come back, how
will you be, you might
come back so different
that you won’t
come back,
and what about me,
how will I be if you don’t
come back, or if
you come back
so different that you don’t
come back?
town chronicler: She gets up and embraces him. Her hands scamper over his body. Her mouth probes his face, his eyes, his lips. From my post in the shadows, outside their window, it looks as if she is throwing herself over him like a blanket on a fire.
woman:
That night I thought:
Now we will never
separate.
Even if we want to,
how can we?
Who will sustain him, who will
embrace
if our two bodies do not
envelop
his empty fullness?
man:
Come,
what could be simpler?
Without mulling or wondering
or thinking: his mother
and father
get up and go
to him.
woman:
In whose eyes will we look to see him,
present and absent?
In whose hand
will we intertwine fingers
to weave him
fleetingly
in our flesh?
Don’t go.
man:
The eyes,
one single
spark
from his eyes—
how can we,
how may we
not try?
woman:
And what will you tell him,
you miserable madman?
What will you say? That hours
after him, the hunger awoke
in you?
That your body
and mine, like a pair
of ticks, clutched
at life and clung
to each other and forced us
to live?
man:
If we can be with him
for one more moment,
perhaps he, too,
will be
for one more
moment,
a look—
a breath—
woman:
And then what?
What will become
of him?
And of us?
man:
Perhaps we’ll die like he did, instantly.
Or, facing him, suspended,
we will swing
between the living
and the dead—
but that we know. Five years
on the gallows of longing.
(pause)
The smell
your body emits
when your grief
plunges on you,
lunges;
the bitter smell in which
I always find
his odor, too.
woman:
His smells—
sweet, sharp,
sour.
His washed hair
his bathed flesh
the simple spices
of the body—
man:
The way he used to sweat after a game,
remember?
Burning with excitement—
woman:
Oh, he had smells for every season:
the earthy aromas of autumn hikes,
rain evaporating from wool sweaters,
and when you worked the spring fields together,
odor from the sweat of your brows,
the vapors of working men, filled the house—
man:
But most of all I loved the summer,
with its notes of peaches
and plums,
their juices running down his cheeks—
woman:
And when he came back
from a campfire with friends,
night and smoke
on his breath—
man:
Or when he returned
from the beach,
a salty tang
in his hair—
woman:
On his skin.
The scent of his baby blanket,
the smell of his diapers
when he drank only breast milk,
then seemingly
one moment later—
man:
The sheets of a boy
in love.
woman:
Sometimes, when we are
together, your sorrow
grips my sorrow,
my pain bleeds into yours,
and suddenly the echo of
his mended, whole body
comes from inside us,
and then one might briefly imagine—
he is here.
(pause)
I would go
to the end
of the world with you,
you know. But you are not
going to him, you are going
somewhere else, and there
I will not go, I cannot.
I will not.
Reading Group Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Falling Out of Time, internationally acclaimed author David Grossman’s powerful, genre-defying exploration of grief and bereavement as experienced by residents of a small village.
1. As Falling Out of Time opens, Walking Man and his wife are embroiled in a tense discussion about whether or not he should embark on his journey. Why does his wife protest the decision? How does her perspective on her husband’s journey change in the course of the book?
2. On page 20, Walking Man’s wife asks him: “Will I ever again / see you / as you are, / rather than as / he is not?” How is the relationship between husband and wife changed by the loss of a child? How does it affect specific couples in the novel—the Town Chronicler and his wife, the Midwife and the Cobbler?
3. The Town Chronicler is initially introduced as a sort of omnipresent force who objectively catalogs the events of the town from a distance. Yet as the book progresses, his own melancholia is revealed. What initiates this change? What does this
4. Walking Man begins his journey by circling his own home—in hopes of getting his wife to join him—and gradually widens his path to cover greater swaths of the town. Why do you think the author chose to make his path circular rather than linear?
5. On page 50, the Duke calls himself “an impostor of sorts, a sham / pretending to be an everyman.” Over the course of the narrative, how does the Duke’s admission of loss bring him closer to the townspeople? Does the shared experience of loss make him an “everyman”?
6. Explore the relationship between the Duke and the Town Chronicler. What did you make of the edict from the Duke? Did you believe that the Duke ordered the Town Chronicler not to mention his loss, or do you think that the Town Chronicler’s reticence developed as a coping mechanism?
7. The Centaur initially challenges the authority of the Town Chronicler, taunting him for his government role, but on page 174, he describes him as a “friend.” How does this tension eventually lead to mutual respect? How does it help to unite the townspeople?
8. At the beginning of the narrative, the Town Chronicler observes that the mute net-mender has broken her nine-year silence and that her voice is “heavenly.” How does this description contrast with her physical description? When the Duke refers to her as “Lady of the Nets” on page 160, is it done ironically or as a sign of respect?
9. Why do you think the Midwife stutters throughout? What leads her husband to think that “her words are / hardly broken / anymore!” on page 131?
10. Falling Out of Time is a unique blend of prose, poetry, and drama. Why do you think the author chose to structure the narrative in such a way?
11. In the first section of the book, the dialogue moves from character to character, but in Part II, the townspeople’s voices are often considered collectively as “Walkers.” What does this say about the shared experience of grief? How does the similarity of their experiences bring a leveling effect to their society?
12. On pages 147–48, several characters struggle to remember who they are. What does this say about the shift in identity after the death of a child? How does memory interfere with their ability to redefine themselves?
13. Several characters express regrets about how they interacted with their children, or about how time was spent with a child. Whose admissions had the greatest impact on you?
14. Why do you think the author chose to represent the writer character as a Centaur? How does the Centaur’s struggle to write reflect the mourner’s communal struggle to communicate?
15. On page 160, the Walkers state that “poetry / is the language / of my grief.” Do you agree? How is this reflected in the text?
16. On page 94, the Centaur expresses his struggle to articulate death: “Death will deathify, / or is it deathened? Deatherized? / Deathered?” What does the Centaur’s “little game” say about the limitations—or flexibility—of language? How does the playful transformation of the word “death” limit or enhance its power for the speaker?
17. What does the appearance of the boy on page 189 signify? How do the townspeople react to hearing his voice? Explore the notion that “there / is breath / inside the pain.”
Interviews
Barnes & Noble Review Interview with David Grossman
In 2010, four years after he lost his son Uri in the invasion of Lebanon, Israeli writer David Grossman utilized his grief to create the deepest yet most soaring kind of novel. To the End of the Land was also a commercial success, selling more than 100,000 copies in a land of 7 million. But the grief was far from extinguished, and Mr. Grossman has subsequently published a novella-length book — Falling Out of Time — that uses a minimum of words and plot lines to dig even deeper, using archetypal characters with names like the Walking Man, the Midwife, the Town Chronicler, all of whom share the heartache of losing a child. It felt more than a little invasive to delve into these matters in a recent interview, but cowardly not to. Our discussion follows. —Daniel Asa Rose
The Barnes & Noble Review: This new book reads more like poetry than straight narrative, perhaps befitting its dirge-like quality. It also strikes me as having the incantatory cadences of a prayer book:
Whether I come or go,David Grossman: It is kind of a prayer book for a secular person who faces the question of death and cannot find solace in the belief of the afterlife, and will try as hard as he can to reach the most remote place where the living can be in touch with those who are dead.
whether rise or lie —
it is here.
When I am alone
or sitting in the square,
or teaching a class —
it is here
BNR: Would it be correct to see Falling Out of Time as a kind of companion piece to To the End of the Land? A sort of coda, using up leftover vapors of grief?
DG: To the End of the Land is a book that describes the fear of losing a beloved one and tells of an attempt to turn back the wheel of events, while Falling Out of Time describes the situation after the catastrophe has occurred. It tells of the attempts of the characters to find a language with which to speak the unspeakable. When we lost our son Uri almost eight years ago, we received many letters of condolence from Israel and abroad, many of them from writers. I was astonished to see that they wrote with almost the same formulation, as if dictated — "we are speechless," "there are no words to describe," and so forth. Other people who came to see us spoke the same way — not because they are insensitive but because often we do not have words to express such sadness. It is in these moments that we need to have the most nuanced language, to describe exactly where you are now, what you are experiencing. In the beginning I was mute and had no words that could match what I felt, but after a while I found a growing need to articulate it; to give names to what happens to us is what makes us human. And the more nuanced we are verbally the more nuanced we are within our being. At the same time I felt the temptation to avoid the pain that comes from direct contact with grief — the temptation to deny and to find solace by escaping it. On the contrary, I wanted to be there fully with what I faced. I think this book is the result of these two contradictory powers — the first to remain silent in the face of what happened and then the need to give a name to every sensation. If I were doomed to be exiled to this island of grief, then at least I would try to map it with my own words. The result is this book that as you have noted contains much poetry — since poetry is the closest art to silence.
BNR: To the End of the Land, and this book even more so, read as though the words weren't so much plucked from the air as mined from someplace deep within. Was there a sense of inevitability behind the words?
DG: I always prefer books that are inevitable. So many of the books I read are simply too "evitable." But I am always attracted to books where I feel the author had no choice but to write this story.
BNR: To my ear, the language as well as the sentiment of Falling Out of Time has the same distilled quality as something from Samuel Beckett. Will you ever get to the point where the language and the sentiment are distilled so much that, like Beckett, there's little left but silence? Would you want it to get that far?
DG: When we talk about death, when we talk about the loss of our beloved, we always stand in a place where there are not enough words and they are beyond our reach. This book was an attempt — as far as I could go — where words can still serve me and words can still radiate and through them find a way back to life, to find a way for me and for the reader to return to life and fight against the gravity of loss and grief.
BNR: The other connection I kept making was to the Noh plays of Yeats. The same semi-mystical dream quality, the same obsession with-not ghosts, exactly-but with deceased people whose presence is not absent, to use your kind of construction, or whose absences are still very much present. Have you read much Yeats, or are you aware of being influenced by him?
DG: Thank you — these are deep, intelligent questions and I am flattered with the comparison. I love to read Yeats but I cannot say he is my literary mentor. I think that Yeats is a religious writer in his soul, a mystic, and I am very much a secularist. It is important for me to acknowledge that there is no afterlife, and that we must create our solace alone and by ourselves.
BNR: The short, choppy lines lend the book a breathlessness that feels like after one has wept a great deal. Intentional?
DG: I would say the contrary. There is no crying and not a drop of tears in this book. It is not sentimental. It is emotional. And what you see as breathlessness is of one holding back his tears.
BNR: A technical question: Why does the midwife have a stutter, at least in the beginning? Is it to distinguish her voice from the others or that, as someone who brings new life into the world, she has particular trouble articulating the un-articulatable?
if only I knew the th-th-there, too,DG: Many of the protagonists have difficulty expressing themselves. This is the paralysis one often feels in such situations of loss, when reality does not progress naturally and harmoniously. The midwife's experience is inarticulate: both life and words are chopped off. There is a violation of the right order of things with the death of her child. But when the midwife decides to join the walking people she then stops stuttering and like them she starts using poetry. The usage of poetry indicates the beginning of the recovery from her paralysis.
when you arrived,
when you finished
dying,
you were welcomed with loving arms
and a warm, fragrant t-t-towel ?.
BNR: As the child of Zionists (my parents met at a Zionist youth camp in the Catskills in the late '40s), I witnessed a generation of American Jews grow from a state of rapturous idealism to one of increasing despair, not to say disgust, with the nation of Israel. What would you offer the old believers?
DG: I would offer them that with all the criticism they have for the Israeli government, it is important not to forget the great idea that is the basis and at the heart of the creation of Israel. Even for those who are against the policies of the government, it is essential to remember the story of the homecoming of a whole people after a millennium, and after persecution and the Shoah. Coming back to the place where they originated as a nation, as a religion, as a language. For me it is still one of the greatest human stories and I insist on remembering this when I criticize the government and the occupation and the army. Things went terribly wrong since Israel occupied the territories in 1967. But I believe the options that are in front of us are still worth fighting for, to have a normal life and to experience a life of peace and removing the threat of death that has been hovering over our heads for so many years. All of these things can be achieved when we have peace with our neighbors, a struggle with which I have been involved for the past three decades. Not just to settle the territorial problems between us and our neighbors but to also allow them and us another way of being in this life.
BNR: Is the Holocaust still a subject for young Israeli writers? Will it ever again be a living topic for them or as has it been forever relegated to ancient history?
DG: The Holocaust is significant not only for young writers, but for most young people in Israel. It is present in many ways. Some are authentic and express the attempt to understand how the Shoah could have happened and what lessons we should learn. And it also exists in the manipulations of politicians. Our prime minister is an expert in confusing the echoes of the past traumas with the real dangers we are now facing. It is heartbreaking how many people are almost helpless in front of such manipulations, and how we are paralyzed because of the way we are programmed to translate every situation into the terminology of the Shoah. Even when we are given an opportunity to engage in the peace process with the Palestinians, a process we need desperately, we are unable to respond accordingly.
BNR: With these two books of mourning behind you, do you hope to get back to more secular works, even sexual ones? In earlier books such as Be My Knife and See Under: Love you had a way of getting under a woman's skin that always made me feel you must have been a woman in an earlier incarnation.
DG: It is always a pleasure to write about characters who I will not be. I remember when I was writing Ora [the main character in To the End of the Land], how long it took me to understand her. But eventually I surrendered to her being within me. Inside each of us there is the potential for so many other selves, but because of conventions we congeal into one story line. Writing gives me the pleasure of melting into the others that are within me.
BNR: A question about translation. Your language is so nuanced I'm surprised you never translate your own work. Why do you trust professional translators to do a better job?
DG: You are very generous but I know my limitations. I prefer to give the act of translation to my very gifted translator, Jessica Cohen.
BNR: Finally, after putting down one of your books, what do you most hope your readers come away with?
DG: I don't know what to tell my readers, but I know my own expectations as a reader: I want to come out a bit different from the way I went into the reading and I want to feel a little bit less lonely. I want to feel that someone out there understands me.
—April 9, 2014