Hot Milk

“I have always wanted to go to Trieste because it sounds like tristesse, which is a light-hearted word, even though in French it means sadness. In Spanish it is tristeza, which is heavier than French sadness, more of a groan than a whisper.”

LanguageSadnessTrieste

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“I have researched aboriginal culture, Mayan hieroglyphics and the corporate culture of a Japanese car manufacturer, and I have written essays on the internal logic of various other societies, but I haven't a clue about my own logic.”

LogicAnthropologyDeborah LevyHot Milk

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“I had broken the rules of exchange. She had given and I had taken, but I had not reciprocated. A gift like love is never free.”

LoveGift

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“I want to get away from the kinship structures that are supposed to hold me together. To mess up the story I have been told about myself. To hold the story upside down by its tail.”

Family

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“Sometimes, I find myself limping. It's as if my body remembers the way I walk with my mother. Memory is not always reliable. It is not the whole truth. Even I know that.”

FamilyMemoryTrauma

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“You have becomes used to administering your mother's medication. So perhaps it is as if you are coming off medication, too? You are using your mother like a shield to protect yourself from making a life. Medication is a ritual which I have now erased from both your lives. Attention! You will have to invent another one.”

FamilyBoundaries

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“Gómez had suggested I steal a fish to achieve more courage and purpose. I regarded this task as an anthropological experiment, though it crossed a border into something approaching magic, or perhaps magical thinking. When I googled how to gut a fish, there were over 9 million results.”

CourageBraveryBoldnessAnthropology

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“We have to mourn our dead, but we cannot let them take over our life.”

LifeDeathMournDeborah LevyHot Milk

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“My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out smoke. Like a volcano. Like a monster. I want to fume. I do not want to be the girl whose job it is to wail in a high-pitched voice at funerals.”

GirlSmokeDeborah LevyHot Milk

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“How do we set about not imagining something?”

ImaginingDeborah LevyHot Milk

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“What is a sigh? That would be another good subject for a field study. Is it just a long, deep, audible exhalation of breath? Rose's sigh was intense but not subdued. It was frustrated but not yet sad. A sigh resets the respiratory system so it was possible that my mother had been holding her breath, which suggests she was more nervous than she appeared to be. A sigh is an emotional response to being set a difficult task.”

SighDeborah LevyHot Milk

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“Time has shattered, it's cracked like my lips.”

TimeDeborah LevyHot Milk

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“Afterwards, I will have to tie the trees to bamboo poles so the wind will not determine their shape. A tree cannot be given form by the vagaries of the wind.”

WindTreesDeborah LevyHot Milk

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