No surprises
a job that slowly kills you,
bruises that won’t heal.
You look so tired-unhappy,
bring down the government,
they don’t, they don’t speak for us.
I’ll take a quiet life,
a handshake of carbon monoxide,with no alarms and no surprises…
–Radiohead, No Surprises. The video is excellent too.
Then her husband took out his pocket watch.
“One hour, Marcie. I’ll give you one hour,” he said. “If you’re not back by then, you can find your own way home.”
She walked for half an hour with her bare feet in the frothy edge of the sea, then turned back along the cliff path, and from the shelter of some trees, watched her husband, at five minutes past the appointed hour, slam the car door and turn the ignition. Just as he was gathering speed, she jumped into the road and stopped the car.
Then she climbed in and spent the rest of her life with a man who would have gone home without her.
–Claire Keegan, Close to the Water’s Edge
A moment of silence followed. The eyes she turned on me seemed to lack any depth. The dessicated shadow of a smile flickered at the corners of her mouth, suggesting a kind of hushed sense of resignation.
“I’m married now,” she said. “To an accountant three years my senior. And I have two children, a boy and a girl. We have an Irish setter. I drive an Audi and I play tennis with my friends twice a week. That’s the life I’m living now.”
–Haruki Murakami, Birthday Girl