Tag: Love

I burst into tears. Love is hell.

Live & Learn17 Comments


Tonight I see what looks to be a tick on the dog’s eyelid. I get a pair of tweezers from the bathroom and kneel to remove it. He looks at me askance but lies there in beatific patience. I smooth the fine yellow fur on his head, apply the tweezers to the tick, and clamp down. But it is not a tick—just a little black growth above his eye. A stream of blood trickles down his snout, and he doesn’t flinch. I gasp. He leans forward and licks my hand, to forgive me for hurting him, with blood in his fur. I burst into tears. Love is hell.

— Daniel Poppick, “The Copywriter: A Novel” (Scribner, February 3, 2026)

Notes:

  • Book: I Loved it. Not recommended / Cautiously recommended.
  • NY Times Book Review of “The Copywriter” here. Notable quote from review: “It’s simultaneously a quotidian task — it’s just another copywriting assignment — and also a monumental moral decision. In action, it may seem like a small choice, but in a vast and ugly universe, sometimes small choices are all we have.”

Sunday Morning…

Live & Learn10 Comments

What does he remember best? Ah yes – a Sunday morning when he’s trying to have a lie-in, he needs sleep, all the sleep he can get, he’s been out on the fjord all night. He wakes from a dream, his boat is going down, the wheelhouse slowly filling with seawater; he’s at the bottom of the sea, he’s underwater, lying there helpless on his back, his face turned to the surface. Then he’s suddenly wide awake, one ear full of liquid, both girls sitting on top of him. Eli and Guro have brought a bottle of water into the bed; they giggle when they see his reaction. There is no happiness like this, a Sunday morning, with the early sun hanging above the mountains on the other side of the fjord, a light that settles over the bedclothes, over the floor, over his girls. He hears their breath, their laughter.

— Frode Grytten, The Ferryman and His Wife. Translated from Norwegian to English by Alison McCullough. (Algonquin Books, November 18, 2025)

Notes:

  • Recommended.
  • Book Review by Eileen Garvin: Read This: The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn17 Comments

Are you okay, Dad? she asked.
Yes, he said. Will there be someone there to meet you?
Yes, Dad, there will.
Do you have money on you?
Yes, Dad.
Got your passport?
Yes, Dad.
Umbrella?
Yes, Dad.
Contraception?
Yes, Dad.
Do you love me? Yes, Dad.

— Frode Grytten, The Ferryman and His Wife. Translated from Norwegian to English by Alison McCullough. (Algonquin Books, November 18, 2025)

Notes:

  • Recommended.
  • Book Review by Eileen Garvin: Read This: The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

We all have that feeling, and then we come back to reality.

Live & Learn8 Comments

Andrew, can you end with a family-friendly joke? This was a Louis C.K. joke that Seinfeld told when they were doing a conversation — comedians on comedians. The joke is something like: You know, going on vacation with the family, I put the kids in the car seats. I put my wife in the car. Put the coffees in the coffee holder. I put the bags in the back. I close the trunk. I close my wife’s door. I close the kids’ door. And when I’m walking from my wife’s door to my door, that’s my vacation.

I know exactly the joke you’re talking about. I think about it constantly. It’s so good, and at its core you could say quite mean. That’s the beauty of a joke. It allows us to access these darker thoughts and emotions that we have: He loves his family, but in that moment, they’re safe, and I don’t have to deal with them. We all have that feeling, and then we come back to reality. And that’s what would be awesome: If people get that these things that we’re saying — it’s just what we feel in that little moment, and then we step back.

— Andrew Schulz, “‘Podcast Bro,’ Might Be America’s Foremost Political Journalist.” Interviewed by David Marchese. (NY Times, June 21, 2025)

For a life so circumscribed, how is it that our bounties feel so limitless?

Live & Learn22 Comments

[…] But Odie’s most favourite phrase in the whole world, the one that makes him delirious; that has him scrambling on my laptop (and deleting entire sections of writing); reaching ever higher to lick the kids; making his trademark bark-moan-beg sounds if we don’t quickly get our act together, is: “Walkie time!”

To offer to walk Odie is to taste pure happiness.

Every day, we walk Odie along the same paths. He eats the same food at the same time. We use the same words to the same effect. For a life so circumscribed, how is it that our bounties feel so limitless? In a life of ups and downs, perhaps it is the uncomplicated nature of the relationship that we have come to love. […]

He will begin a new year of receiving and giving joy in the same ways as the last four years.
It’s a simple life. And therein lies its beauty.

— Ranjana Srivastava, from “In a Life of Ups and Downs, we have come to cherish our dog’s uncomplicated love” (The Guardian, December 26, 2024). Ranjana Srivastava is an Australian oncologist, award-winning author and Fulbright scholar. Her latest book is called A Better Death