some mornings... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me.
Jennifer EganRead
We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on aging and the passage of time, questioning the gradual changes we experience in life.
In this quote, Jennifer Egan explores the complexities of aging and the existential thoughts that arise as we contemplate our mortality. It raises questions about the nature of aging, the changes in our lifestyle, and how we perceive the passage of time. The questioning tone suggests a deep concern for not just the individual’s experience of aging, but also for the relationships and connections with others as life progresses. The imagery of hidden people and memories evokes a sense of nostalgia and introspection about life's transitions.
Themes
AgingTimeExistentialismIntrospectionMortality
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry reading, one may use this quote to introduce themes of aging and reflection.
More from Jennifer Egan
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I find myself thinking more about the past as I get older... maybe because there's just more of it to think about. At the same time, I'm less haunted by it than I was as a younger person. I guess that's probably the ideal: to reach a point where you have access to all of your memories, but you don't feel victimized by them.
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I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.
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And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.
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We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.
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