let the great world spin

Literature can stop my heart and execute me for a moment, allow me to become someone else.

— Colum McCann

Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Mórrígan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?' Our father gripped the Bannister. His hands were liver spotted, and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Mórrígan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost.' My own sons,' he said. We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Mórrígan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside.

— Colum McCann

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It’s all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you.

— Colum McCann