The diseased, anyway, are more interesting than the healthy. The words of the diseased, even those who can manage only a murmur, carry more weight than those of the healthy. Then, too, all healthy people will in the future know disease. That sense of time, ah, the diseased man’s sense of time, what treasure hidden in a desert cave. Then, too, the diseased truly bite, whereas the healthy pretend to bite but really only snap at the air. Then, too, then, too, then, too.
More from Bolano. It’s almost like scat singing there at the end, jazzy, picking up a note from earlier and turning back on it until it means what it always did plus something more.
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January 5, 2009 at 8:10 am
I Come Here to Destroy!
http://maxwelljay.wordpress.com/
New fiction from the hinterlands.
The train station is deserted.
I walk to the edge of the platform, heave my body over the side. It starts to rain. Walking along the tracks, it’s unlikely anything will be coming in the other direction so I unscrew the bottle of rum and keep walking; cobbles, wood, cobbles wood. The rain carves up my face but the rum protects me splitting in two.
And deep in the Firth, schools of herring jabber into the darkness while the fisherman’s nets sway, still as death, in the bitter brine.