In the zoo

” It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiastically they drive you to your own destructions. […] Perhaps he said, we are all like animals in the zoo, and once we see  that one of us has got out of the enclosure we shout at him to run like mad, even though it will only result in him being lost.”

© 2014 Rachel Cusk, Outline.

Tacit understandings

“His words reminded me of oxygen masks , which had not, of course, put in an appearance over the past few hours. It was kind of a mutual cynicism, I said, that had resulted in the oxygen masks being provided, on the tacit understanding that they would never be needed. My neighbour said he had found that to be true of many aspects of life, but that all the same the law of averages was not something it paid to base your personal expectations on.”

© 2014 Rachel Cusk, Outline.