#314 Stone- Edith Pearlman
At seventy-two, Ingrid didn’t need a change in her life,
didn’t need to leave New York City. But, she found herself doing just that,
moving to a small flat southern town, at least for a while.
“A stone house instead of a stone city. An underfunded
public library instead of that pretentious den. Rabbits on the lawn instead of
monkeys at the zoo…”
She found her new surroundings intoxicating and life giving:
“Happiness lengthens time. Every day seemed as long as a
novel. Every night a double feature. Every week a lifetime, a muted lifetime, a
lifetime in which sadness, always wedged under her breast like a doorstop, lost
some of its bite.”
“Anyway she liked to walk through the woods. It took more
time. She’d discovered she was interested not in saving time but in spending
it.”
The three month respite she spent outside of New York gave
her perspective as the things around her died and her life came closer and
closer to that as well. She holds onto what’s important for as long as she can.
She could adorn the important things and wear them around her neck for all to
see, but she chooses to keep them hidden, showing only a few, trying not to
change them in any way.
Notable Passage: “She was another house he would never
build.”
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