After God created the heavens and earth, he stood back to contemplate creation, like a painter standing back from the canvas.

– Sheila Heti

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti @ Bookshop

Quotes

God appears, splits, and manifests as three critics in the sky: a large bird who critiques from above, a large fish who critiques from the middle, and a large bear who critiques while cradling creation in its arms.

All of their apartments stank. But each one stank differently, and how one’s apartment smelled was a source of some personal pride, like their apartment was their own armpit: one felt a bit attracted to the smell, and defensive on its behalf. The front room had a low wood coffee table and a few sagging chairs that were pushed up against the walls, clearly dragged in from the street.

Over the next few weeks, any time Mira and Annie ran into each other, something widened inside of them. Something was opening in Mira’s chest, a portal to Annie and her open chest, which was widening in the direction of Mira. This widening was something that Mira had never felt before, or even known could be. It was like a vagina was stretching for a very large cock, but it was in her chest that this stretching was happening, in the part of her that usually kept love out, that firmly preserved her insides. This was how she normally lived-with that part of her sealed shut. But now it was opening almost too wide, and a similar thing was happening in Annie.

Trees and the sky were not a backdrop to life, but they were equally life. She thought, I am the daughter of everything, but then she thought, No, I am not the daughter of anything. There are no daughters anywhere on earth.

She hadn’t known that plants were the grateful recipients of all consciousness not only of people, but of snails and squirrels and the sun and the rain; that it was their generosity that made them so lush and the very colour of welcome.