moldybookpages

Transcriptions of pages i photographed while reading them

Sister Safety Pin - Lorrie Sprecher

I tried to write a poem for my workshop, but I couldn't get inspired, like the needle on the phonograph inside my head would keep repeating the word lesbian and give me away. I needed something to turn in and jotted down a completely brainless haiku about seeing a VW bug in the road. Then I got paranoid that maybe I'd really written: I am lesbian / I fall in love with women / I am lesbian. I read the haiku again: yellow Volkswagen / replacing all the sunshine / bright testimony. It seemed innocent. But I grew concerned about the word testimony, which I put in because it had four syllables. Could it be construed to mean lesbian? -p??
We were just naive enough to pretend that if we stole enough pastries and they kept ordering more, they would eventually run out of money. We donated the pastries to a homeless shelter near Sue's house. Sure, we knew in our hearts it didn't matter what we did. But I saved a corner of my mind for believing that two young women could make the military use up so much of its budget feeding people, it wouldn't be able to buy missiles anymore. -p79
I wondered if I would always feel like an outsider in everybody else's life. -p??
Iso and I didn't know each other well enough to have had many fights. Mostly when we were mad, she just didn;t speak to me. -p100
Iso drove me to the Greyhound station, and we kissed goodbye. The visit hadn't been everything I'd hoped for. Iso hadn't fallen crazy in love with me. She wasn't perfect. But I thought back to the vacuum my life had been before I met her, and I climbed onto that bus believing I had to hold on to what I had. [...] Out the window, I could see the ocean, and it was just space. I thought, my heart used to look like that before I met Iso–just empty space. I could have parked cars inside my heart without wasting it. But now my heart is full–full of Iso's auburn hair and the gentle way she touches me when we make love. I thought that would make a good poem if I ever had the guts to write it. I decided that I had to make her love me. I didn't want a parking lot for a heart. -p???
I wondered if I was strong enough to be generous. Quickly I counted all the reasons I was strong: a. I drove across the United States by myself and found an apartment b. I teach people c. I am cooking dinner d. I live alone and am surviving e. I remember to eat vegetables -p157

The Education of Harriet Hatfield - May Sarton

"Why? Is it bad to be an innocent? I suppose you are right. I am one." "Innocents get beaten. Look at me." "But they survive. I do look at you." -p129
There are, after all, advantages in being an old person. If you can be a rock and not fall apart. -p205
I am in a thicket of disorder and pain and end by just sitting at my desk and doodling the heads of strange animals. I discover that it is not a bad way to relieve tension and I am quite pleased by the odd animals I am creating. -p212
These days I see so much pain everywhere. And now here it is again being overcome. I have tears in my eyes and hope no one notices. -p271
[...] I say doubtfully, cause punishing them is not going to change their hatred and contempt and that is what my deepest dream is. - p301
"You are saying, and I hear you, [...] that you are somehow leading a new life. Your own. I find that moving. Thanks for telling me all this. Thanks for being my friend and trusting me with it." - p310
This is the way my life is these days and the way it will be. One major problem appears to be settled [...] and then another problem breaks over my head like a huge wave. But it's alright, I say to myself. It's the way things are. It's the real world and I am fully alive in it - p320

The Post Office Girl - Stefan Zweig

And she understood the stammer, understood that this harsh man so ferociously twisted by shame wanted her to come back but was afraid to ask. -p197
And when they thought of each other, it wasn't with feelings of passion or love, but with something like pity–not the way you think of a lover, but of a friend in trouble. -p214
It would be madness to willingly give up that freedom for whose sake everything was done. There will always be time for suicide. - p255
In all future planning our individual responsibility will remain unchanged: our conviction will be at all times that we have done no injustice to the state or to each other, but only what was appropriate and natural in our situation. It would be senseless to venture into such danger with a bad conscience. -p255

Nevada - Imogen Binnie

That's what it's like to be a trans woman: never being sure who knows you're trans or what that knowledge would even mean to them. Being on unsure, weird social footing. And it's not even like it matters if somebody knows you're trans. Who cares. You just don't want your hilarious, charming, complicated weirdo self to be erased by ideas people have in their heads that were made up by, like, hack TV writers, or even hackier Internet porn writers. It just sucks having to educate people. Sound familiar? Trans women have the same exact shit that everybody else in the world has who isn't white, het, male, able-bodied or otherwise privileged. It's not glamorous or mysterious. It's boring. -p6
She reads blogs and writes in her own. She tells the Internet about her early night, her early morning, the haircuts in the diner, figuring out her life. She used to write in this thing, like, every day, but she's lucky if she can update it once a week any more. Although it's probably luckier not to stare at a computer all the time. -p61
I think I'm only happy when I'm alone. Which was the wrong thing to say, or at least the wrong way to put that. Though maybe there is no good way to say I'm only happy when I'm alone. -p72
But he still can't bring himself to just be like, Fuck you, and never talk to her again. He imagines having the kind of fight you have when you're friends, where you make up afterward, but he's only known her for a day and has no idea how to argue like that. He's probably never had that kind of fight with anyone. So he sits and sulks and glares at the cactuses. -p218

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