Category: David Wroblewski

David Wroblewski

He had also been demonstrative and intelligent from the very beginning, his questions startlingly insightful. She would watch him absorb a new idea and wonder what effect it would have on him, because, with Edgar, EVERYTHING came out, eventually, somehow. But the PROCESS – how he put together a story about the world’s workings – that was mysterious beyond all ken. In a way, she thought, it was the only disappointing thing about having a child. She’d imagined he would stay transparent to her, more PART of her, for so much longer. But despite the proximity of the daily work, Edgar had ceased long before to be an open book. A friend, yes. A son she loved, yes. But when it came to knowing his thoughts, Edgar could be opaque as a rock.

David Wroblewski

AlmondineEventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her.All that winter and all through the spring Almondine had known something was going to happen, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find it. Sometimes, when she entered a room, there was the feeling that the thing that was going to happen had just been there, and she would stop and pant and peer around while the feeling seeped away as mysteriously as it had arrived. Weeks might pass without a sign, and then a night would come, when, lying nose to tail beneath the window in the kitchen corner, listening to the murmur of conversation and the slosh and clink of dishes being washed, she felt it in the house again and she whisked her tail in long, pensive strokes across the baseboards and silently collected her feet beneath her and waited. When half an hour passed and nothing appeared, she groaned and sighed and rolled onto her back and waited to see if it was somewhere in her sleep.

David Wroblewski

Edgar, do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone? There’s no rule book that says how to do this.” She laughed, bitterly. “Wouldn’t that be great? No decisions to make. Everything laid right out for us. But there’s no such thing. You want facts, don’t you? Rules. Proof. You’re like your father that way. Just because a thing can’t be logged, charted, and summarized doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Half the time we walk around in love with the idea of a thing instead of the reality of it. But sometimes things don’t turn out that way. You have to pay attentin to what’s real, what’s in the world. Not some imaginary alternative, as if it’s a choice we could make.

David Wroblewski

Edgar, there’s a difference between missing him and wanting nothing to change,” she said. “They aren’t the same things at all. And we can’t do anything about either one. Things always change. Things would be changing right now if your father were alive, Edgar. That’s just life. You can fight it or you accept it. The only difference is, if you accept it, you can get to do other things. If you fight it, you’re stuck in the same spot forever. Does that make sense?”But aren’t some changes worth fighting?”You know that’s true.”So how do you know which is which?”I don’t know a way to tell for sure,” she said. “You ask, ‘Why am I really fighting this?’ If the answer is ‘Because I’m scared of what things will be like,’ then, most times, you’re fighting for the wrong reason.”And if that’s not the answer?”Then you dig in your heels and you fight and fight and fight. But you have to be absolutely sure you can handle a different kind of change, because in the end, things will change anyway, just not that way. In fact, if you get into a fight like that, it pretty much guarantees things are going to change.

David Wroblewski

We’ll know we’ve got it right when they choose for themselves,” he used to say. That doesn’t make sense. ‘That’s what I thought too. I asked him what he meant, but he just shrugged. I don’t think he knew himself. But I keep thinking maybe that stray is making exactly the kind of choice he talked about. We’re talking about an adult dog, a dog that’s been out in the woods for a long time, trying to decide whether or not we can be trusted. Whether this is his place. And it matters to him – he’d rather starve than make the wrong decision.

David Wroblewski

No one can say if you are that person who, given good paint, good brushes, and a fine canvas, can produce something better than the factory man. That is, and has always been, beyond the realm of science. You do have the attitude of the dreamer about you. For that reason, I haven’t the heart to argue anymore about this – it is a hopeless talk. And for a simple factory man like me, an effort must be abandoned once its hopelessness is exposed. Only the artist perseveres in such circumstances.