We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life... We discovered the color of each other's eyes.
Jerry SpinelliHe tapped my chest. 'Happy is here.' He tapped his own chest. 'Here.' I looked down past my chin. 'Inside?' 'Inside.' It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me than cabbage and turnips.
Jerry Spinelliof all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the most remarkable. Bad things did not stick to her. Correction: her bad things did not stick to her. If we were hurt, if we were unhappy or otherwise victimized by life, she seemed to know about it, and to care, as soon as we did. But bad things falling on her -- unkind words, nasty stares, foot blisters -- she seemed unaware of. I never saw her look in a mirror, never heard her complain. All of her feelings, all of her attentions flowed outward. She had no ego.
Jerry SpinelliI had never realized how much I needed the attention of others to confirm my own presence.
Jerry SpinelliIโm erased. Iโm gone. Iโm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowlโฆ. Andโฆ I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. Iโm not outside my world anymore, and Iโm not really inside it either. The thing is, thereโs no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain. I like that most of all, being rain.
Jerry Spinelli