only in hoboken

it all just came together...

steve earle

I cradled it, I tenderly took it home, I expectantly eyed it on my bedside table for weeks, I opened it, I anticipated beautiful words spilling out of the hard covers...

but I found a story, a story with magical realism (if I've said it once I've said a thousand times - nobody should even try it - no one - after Garcia Marquez and Allende), with the following sole passage that, in all reality, only half-begged for a rereading:

Naturally it was her grandfather who had first recognized that spirits of all kinds were drawn to Graciela like moths to a flame and that she possessed the rare ability to see and hear them all. That same internal beacon attracted human attention as well, and her grandfather had told her that if she was to have any peace in this world, she had to learn how not to be noticed when she didn't wish to be. It was simply a matter, he said, of damping down that inner light.

From I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive by Steve Earle