“Cynicism, which replaces guilt in the brain for pleasures felt in the body, prevents me from believing I truly sense anything. For example: it was not love that I felt at the age of twelve, that soft twitch at the center of myself in the not-quite-gut but not-quite-groin, palms resting on electrified knees, watching a boy’s face cast a man’s shadow on the wall. Truly Drunk, toes dancing bare across spiky grass into a summer evening, would not wonder rationally at the degree of her intoxication. Guilt produces nothing, says my brain, but cynicism produces a sort of false wisdom, a wobbling spirit at the edge of a cliff that believes it knows what it is like to fall.” Winter Afternoon by JENNIFER RUSSO

“Cynicism, which replaces guilt in the brain for pleasures felt in the body, prevents me from believing I truly sense anything. For example: it was not love that I felt at the age of twelve, that soft twitch at the center of myself in the not-quite-gut but not-quite-groin, palms resting on electrified knees, watching a boy’s face cast a man’s shadow on the wall. Truly Drunk, toes dancing bare across spiky grass into a summer evening, would not wonder rationally at the degree of her intoxication. Guilt produces nothing, says my brain, but cynicism produces a sort of false wisdom, a wobbling spirit at the edge of a cliff that believes it knows what it is like to fall.”

Winter Afternoon

by JENNIFER RUSSO

14/2/2012 . 0 notes . Reblog