“But Tom,” it [the nickly shimmer of the moon on a black lake on the Isle of Skye] said, “the swinging of your pendulums! Everyone’s pendulum swinging, to and fro, and always you’re getting hit by someone else’s swinging pendulum. You’re minding your business, but someone else’s pendulum is swinging around, and pow! you get it in the head.”
“That happens, yes.”
“I saw you and Erin by the shed.”
“Oh.”
“I was there.”
“That makes sense. I saw you, too.”
“I watch you often, Tom. I have time on my hands. Time is different to me than it is to you.”

I was still thinking about what the nickly shimmer had seen. He, however, was warming to the sound of his thoughts.

“I feel time like you dream. Your dreams are jumbled. You can’t remember the order of your dreams, and when you recall them, the memories bend. Faces change. It’s all in puddles and ripples. That’s what time is for me.”

- Excerpt from Quiet, a short story by Dave Eggars, from his collection How We Are Hungry.

I’ve been reading this collection between doses of Kurt Vonnegut and Oliver Sacks. It’s brilliant. The story’s have got the brevity but slightly skewed/detached emotional depth that I love in Raymond Carver and Etger Keret. In particular, Climbing To The Window, Pretending To Dance, and The Only Meaning Of The Oil-Wet Water. The former starts feeling like it would be great as a novel, then it takes your face off, and the latter burrows right under my skin with an uneasy romance between friends. I’ve not finished Quiet yet, but the above quote about time made my brain tick tock tick tock…