as queer as a clockwork orange

I’m not sure if finding a particular satisfaction in reading Carver’s short stories does good to any one person, but I find myself drawn intimately to his stories. Each story is a clip of life caught in the moment, capturing precisely the characters’ lives as they start to fray and disintegrate. A distinctive morbidity seeps through the words and phrases; phrases that are so sparse, so detached, and yet relatable. And through his use of minimalistic diction, our imagination runs wild; an imagination that fears and dreads the growing tension, that experiences emotions so interminably complex woven so subtly into each and every word he uses. And then at the end, always deprived of a resolution, we are left to judge. A task that invokes some of the deepest feelings of desolation and tragedy crashing against those of dread and fear of the truth.
Raymond Carver must have been an interesting man.

The more you are separated from something you love
The more you idolize, want, yearn for it.
You search for a replacement;
One that confuses you for the truth.
But replacements hurt too, you know.
They hurt just as much as the truth hurts.

It is amazing how my mom can articulate my every thought, emotion, action so precisely. Past, present, and future. Absolutely fascinating.