The Interpretation Of Murder, Jed Rubenfeld

There is no mystery to happiness.

Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn—or worse, indifference—cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn’t look ahead. He lives in the present.

But there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning—the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life—a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

The Only Place, Linda Hasselstrom

The only place a woman can go to be alone

is the bathroom.

A woman would like to be wrapped in strong arms

when she cries, without having to explain,

or huddle on the couch wrapped in a blanket and a cat.

But all over America, women crouch instead

on a white, cold monument to wasting water.

We lean against a chilled tile wall,

stare at ourselves in an icy mirror,

flush the toilet to cover howls and curses,

brush our teeth twice to cover the taste of anger.

We lock the door, fill the tub with hot bubbles,

take a long time shaving our legs and armpits,

study the way waves break over bulging stomachs.

We scour the sink and rearrange the bottles under it,

refold towels, throw away old prescriptions,

count bandaids and bottles of suntan lotion.

We turn out the lights, stare into candle flames,

light incense, try to pretend we’ve taken our troubles

to a glowing temple, placed them in the lap

of a smiling golden Goddess.

Outside, men who wouldn’t know what to do

if a woman curled up in bed and cried

can relax before bloodless images on TV

and think, “She’s only in the bathroom

doing some woman’s thing.”

Behind a locked door, a woman

spins the empty toilet paper roll

like a Tibetan prayer wheel,

chanting “Help me, help me, help me.”