a cup of light

nicole mones' novel, a cup of light, is what i randomly picked up in the second hand bookstore to take with me on my recent trip to india. i figured it would be easy, light reading, ideal for the circumstances and my then state of mind. it was all that, and more; by speaking to me, it made escape a little difficult.

"He remembered the feeling of being sliced, of an ice pick through the center of him... Even now he still felt the sharp blade of hurt here in this bar, the piano marching around him... Evaporate, he told his memory. Go away. It crinkled to nothing. It would be back, he knew, but not tonight."

"She had done her best and she had to let go of everything else. Let it be, she thought. Stand behind it as it is. And strangely enough, as her hopes and expectations of the ideal fell away from her, fear and all its grating tethers vanished too."

"Dream memory was different; she knew this much. It couldn't be commanded and controlled. It rose on its own, when ready. It was stored and triggered in the body, in the mystery of bones and muscles, not in the mental world where she felt most at home. It was not thought that recovered a dream. It was the shift of a leg, the slight turn of the torso."