#amreading Jenny Offill’s Department of Speculation.

 

Jenny Offill

Memories are microscopic. Tiny particles that swarm together and apart.

Here are a few swarming memories:

• I remember the sad doggish smell of my sweater on rainy days.
• Work seemed preferable to love. It provided a sturdier kind of happiness.
• The reason you need a home is to keep the people you like in and everyone else out. Forget the doorbell. None of the people I like turned up that way.
• Caring for babies is a task urgent and tedious. Providing those necessary services cuts the day up into little scraps.
• Be careful of what you ridicule. You may end up doing some of those ridiculous things yourself. There is nothing you can be sure you will never be.
• Avoid middle age. That’s when people who were merely eccentric for years become unmistakably mad.