What you love the most is what you have to fight the hardest to keep.
Kirsten HubbardI recall the rasp of charcoal on newsprint, the chewing-gum stretch of a kneaded eraser, the precarious bite of a razor blade in a new pencil. The vibrancy of fresh watercolors squeezed from a tube. A new sketchbook, cracked open to flawless white. The way the smell of turpentine made me feel simultaneously sick and excited.
Kirsten HubbardI know what it's like. To sabotage yourself. Nothing makes you hate yourself more than that.
Kirsten HubbardEven when life turns out different than what you've planned, it's always better to try and fail than to wonder what could have been.
Kirsten HubbardWhen you're three, you don't draw what you see--you draw upon your imagination. Nobody tells you to stop putting wings on people, unless you have a most unfortunate preschool teacher. You are intoxicated by your own magic.
Kirsten HubbardIsn't that what your memory was about, Bria? Losing control?"
I pause. "I never knew memories were about anything. Besides the obvious. You make them sound like dreams -- subject to interpretation."
"I think the two are more related than we realize. It's all in how our minds frame them. How we decide what -- and how -- we remember.
Toby liked to say he chose not to be impulsive. As if being impulsive were something you consciously decide. When I look at Starling, with her turquoise turban and wet knot of hair, and at Rowan, with his stack of cheap string anklets, I think: Impulsive isn't something you choose. It's something you are. Like gay, or freckled or bipolar. Something I pretend to be but am not. Not really. Not deep down.
Kirsten HubbardBut all that's hugely unlikely -- with the exception of mosquito bites and sunburn. And yet even experienced travelers are still afraid.
"What everyone forgets -- even me -- is the people who actually live here. In places like Central America, I mean. Southeast Asia. India. Africa. Millions, even billions, of people, who live out their whole lives in these places -- the places so many people like us fear. Think about it: they ride chicken buses to work every day. Their clothes are always damp. Their whole lives, they never escape the dust and the heat. But they deal with all these discomforts. They have to.
"So why can't travelers? If we've got the means to get here, we owe it to the country we're visiting not to treat it like an amusement park, sanitized for our comfort. It's insulting to the people who live here. People just trying to have the best lives they can, with the hands they've been dealt.
Hearing about vacations is like hearing about dreams -- no one cares except the person who's experienced them.
Kirsten HubbardIt’s not that I want to join in. It’s just . . . I want to want to, if that makes any sense. My time with Toby taught me to look both ways before attempting anything new. Until now, when even the suggestion of joining in makes me resist.
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