Nothing ever vanishes/ Dani Shapiro
The stars, rather than appearing distant and implacable, seemed to be signal fires in the dark, mysterious fellow travelers lighting a path; one hundred thousand million luminous presences beckoning from worlds away. See us. We are here. We have always been here. We will always be here. That past, present, and future are a part of this pattern; and that nothing ever vanishes
In the Suburbs of Madrid/ Antonio Muñoz Molina
“I am just as impressed by the formidable advances of the Soviet five-year plans. I have seen the factories with my eyes, the blast furnaces, and the collective farms plowed by tractors. Ten or fifteen years ago, Russia’s countryside was more miserable and backward than Spain’s. Just two years ago, Germany was a humiliated country. Now it is once again the leading power in Europe. Despite the terrible and unfair sanctions imposed on the country by the allies, especially the French, who would not be so resentful if they were not also incompetent and corrupt.”
“Does it matter what price you pay?”
“And don’t democracies also pay a terrible price? Millions of men without work in my country [ the US], in England, in France. The rottenness of the Spanish Republic. Children with swollen bellies and eyes full of flies right here in the suburbs of Madrid.”
