I'm Maddie. I love my family, my friends, and all of the places that I've been. I love politics, and writing, and good love stories. I love big cities and random acts of kindness. I really, really love living and I love my God. I hope you love my tumblr :)
just came back from the cinema and seeing everyone there dressing up in pink or pastel to go and see Barbie is so amazing i feel like I’m witnessing a real moment in pop culture history
being kind is the most important thing in the world btw. you can be talented and clever but if you’re not kind then what is the point of it all, really?
hardcover or paperback? bookstore or library? bookmark or receipt? stand alone or series? nonfiction or fiction? thriller or fantasy? under 300 pages or over 300 pages? children’s or ya? friends to lovers or enemies to lovers? read in bed or read on the couch? read at night or read in the morning? keep pristine or markup? cracked spine or dog ear?
I’ll never love another woman like I love you, Bessie Mae.- Montgomery Clift
They were the most beautiful couple in the history of cinema. It was a sensuous experience to watch them respond to each other. Those gigantic close-ups of them kissing was sybaritic - like gorging on chocolate sundaes.- Andrew Sarris
She thought he was God. He loved her as much as he loved any woman. It was a tragic situation, very The Sun Also Rises. - Richard Brooks
One doesn’t always fry the fish one wants to fry.- Elizabeth Taylor
“When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anything at all?
All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don’t know. Further north, I’d guess.
The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up. He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey. Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.
Damned if I didn’t get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says.
Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy.
Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do.
It’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin.
And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.”
excerpt from Cherry by Mary Karr, context being after a suicide attempt at age 13
Some context: Texas and Arkansas share a corner border. Now, Texas is FECKING HUGE and there are many, many parts of Texas that cannot visit Arkansas overnight, but there are parts where it’s no trouble at all.
However, those places of Texas that are close to Arkansas, do not include “close to Fort Smith, Arkansas.”
The closest Texas gets to Fort Smith is about 185 miles (about 300km), at “a little closer than Texarkana.” (Dallas, fwiw, is about 275 miles/450km from Fort Smith.)
So the dad in this story drove at least SEVEN HOURS round trip, to pick up a bushel of plums for his little girl, in the hope that some almost-out-of-season fruit would convince her to go on living.
Okay.
It’s bigger than this.
According to Wikipedia, the poet Mary Karr was born in 1955 and grew up in Groves, Texas and “lived there until she moved to Los Angeles in 1972.” So she would have been there when she was 13 and attempted suicide.
According to Google Maps, the shortest driving distance between Groves, TX and Fort Smith, AR is 439 miles (or 706 km for metric using folks).
That’s almost 8 hours of driving.
Almost 16 hours roundtrip.
(I assume he broke every speed limit he could.)
That’s how much this man loved his daughter.
May we all be worthy of such love.
May we all be capable of giving such love.
May we all have people in our lives with which we can share this love.
