8: all true: unbelievable

I just read this charming book, a kind of memoir, more like belles lettres, I think. 8: all true: unbelievable by Amy Fusselmen is this controlled mental/emotional meandering, a meditation on time and bodies and joy. She explores these through musings on motorcycles, memories, healing, pedophiles, ice skating, the Beastie Boys, child-rearing and riding in taxis. I feel like I just enjoyed a wonderful conversation with someone that brought me into myself and out of myself at the same time.

"When we are small we do not know time. What we know are actions. What time is it? Time for a story, time for a snack. Time is for spending on actions, and we give ourselves fully to our actions. When we are four it takes a long time to go to the bathroom because there are many things in the bathroom that must be examined. We must examine the toilet paper holder and then the sink and the faucet and the drain plug and perhaps we will plug the drain and then let the water run in the sink until the sink is over-flowing and then use the toothbrush to stir the beautiful water and make that beautiful sound of water cascading on the tile floor, and then when the sink is overflowing and the water-cascading sound is constant we will pretend the toothbrush is a diving bird, flying high and then diving down into the water for a fish and then flying high again and then diving down again, and this is not cute or annoying: it is practice for when we get older. Because when we get older time will seem to have stopped because we have children and now we are busy surrounding them, swooping and holding them, enveloping them, ebbing and flowing around them, and in this ebbing and flowing we no longer beleive we are going forward, we think no, it is the children who are going forward now, in their relatively straight lines, thank God, as we watch them grow, watch them talk and walk and if they don't walk and talk exactly on time, we get upset, and this is why, in midlife, if we are unfamiliar with this feeling of time-stopping, if it makes us nervous to hover beside the sink for a long time and not think about the clock, we may want to get that feeling of going forward again, and that my be why we may suddenly want to buy sports cars or, um, motorcycles."

PS: I hate that this image has that "search inside" thing. I couldn't find another picture of the cover...

PPS: I hate that the spacing isn't working on this post