iQuote

... to say a bed is a thing to sleep on is like saying the sea is a drop of salty water. Below the cotton quilting lay a hidden world. Wooden braces keep the mattress from collapsing. Inner springs coil when pressure is applied, twanging each time we shift in our sleep or flail to find the ideal position, searching for the lost aquatic comfort we knew long ago in our mother's womb. However tame or acrobatic, sex takes its toil on the foam padding, lust grinding it down to powder, the grains sifting earthward night after night. Microscopic colonies of mites wait for the falling manna of our skin. Dreams sweep across the surface like seasons. Fever and night sweats drench the sheets. A bed is a lectern, a pedestal, an altar, a rack, a boxing ring, a cavern of blankets, a spotlit stage, a trampoline, a nest, a grave.

~ Bernard Cooper, "The Bill from My Father"

The realization that one is growing older comes to most of us, if we're lucky, in bearable increments; that way, the full cargo of mortality doesn't sink the boat, so to speak, but is brought on board in the form of manageable hand luggage. One year you develop an almost erotic fondness for the warmth of a hot water bottle tucked between cold sheets; next, you and your friends develop an entire dinner conversation to the benefits of dietary fiber and, less appetisingly, its effects.

~ Bernard Cooper, "The Bill from My Father"

If there were a way to put an end to himself by some purely mental act he would put an end to himself at once, without further ado. His mind is full of stories of people who bring about their own end -- who methodically pay bills, write goodbye notes, burn old love letters, label keys, and then, once everything is in order, don their Sunday best and swallow down the pills they have hoarded for the occasion and settle themselves on their neatly made beds and compose their features for oblivion. Heroes all of them, unsung, unlauded. I am resolved not to be any trouble. The only matter they cannot take care of is the body they leave behind, the mound of flesh that, after a day or two, will begin to stink. If only it were possible, if only it were permitted, they would take a taxi to the crematorium, set themselves down before the fatal door, swallow their dose, then before consciousness dwindles press the button that will precipitate them into the flames and allow them to emerge on the other side as nothing but a shovelful of ash, almost weightless.