When autumn darkness falls, what we will remember are the small acts of kindness: a cake, a hug, an invitation to talk, and every single rose. These are all expressions of a nation coming together and caring about its people. - Jens Stoltenberg
The autumn has arrived, no blooming anymore in the garden.
So it is time to remember the gorgeous rosy beauties that delighted me in the summer. #GARTENGLÜCK
Lucia Berlin’s short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women has been published in Finland in two parts. The latter Dancing on roses has been just released and I got as ecstatic with it as with the first part. I found online quotes from her short stories and publish here one of them. My Jockey was in the first Finnish part ❤︎ - and I fell in love with it!
My Jockey
I like working in Emergency—you meet men there, anyway. Real men, heroes. Firemen and jockeys. They’re always coming into emergency rooms. Jockeys have wonderful X-rays. They break bones all the time but just tape themselves up and ride the next race. Their skeletons look like trees, like reconstructed brontosaurs. St. Sebastian’s X-rays.
I get the jockeys because I speak Spanish and most are Mexican. The first jockey I met was Muñoz. God. I undress people all the time and it’s no big deal, takes a few seconds, Muñoz lay there, unconscious, a miniature Aztec god. Because his clothes were so complicated it was as if I were performing an elaborate ritual. Unnerving, because it took so long, like in Mishima where it takes three pages to take off the lady’s kimono. His magenta satin shirt had many buttons along the shoulder and at each tiny wrist; his pants were fastened with intricate lacings, pre-Columbian knots. His boots smelled of manure and sweat, but were soft and dainty as Cinderella’s. He slept on, an enchanted prince.
The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past.
Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse.
I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up,
I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine there's gotta be a little rain sometime
When you take you gotta give so live and let live and let go oh oh oh oh
I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden
I could promise you things like big diamond rings
But you don't find roses growin' on stalks of clover
So you better think it over
Well, if sweet talking you could make it come true
I would give you the world right now on a silver platter
But what would it matter
So smile for a while and let's be jolly love shouldn't be so melancholy
Come along and share the good times while we can
I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little rain sometime
I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden
I could sing you a tune and promise you the moon
But if that's what it takes to hold you I'd just as soon let you go
But there's one thing I want you to know
You'd better look before you leap still waters run deep
And there won't always be someone there to pull you out
And you know what I’m talking about So smile for a while and let’s be jolly love shouldn't be so melancholy Come along and share the good times while we can
I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little rain sometime
I beg your pardon I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine there’s gotta be a little rain sometime
