Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is a deceptively simple read. While the appears to be relatively light-hearted, a tale of two couples musing on matters of love over a bottle of gin, Carver manages to subtly weave in some very intense meditations on the nature of love, passion, commitment and even violence and death. Although the story is a light read, it challenges the reader to evaluate their own ideas and philosophies on some very complicated themes.

Vast quantities of inebric compounds entered his self, like a bridge over troubled waters, and dispersed, seeking the path of least resistance, melting neurons, pie are emcee square.

A God reeled me in on a string, like a damned yoyo, and then He brushed me off like some unexpected bug crawling up His arm, and I flew (splat) against some cosmic wall, knowing that I must run for all I’m worth lest I get squashed.

I run frantically until I find a safe place, knowing that I’m a bug that has escaped God’s swat.

I am an island in an ocean full of continents.

I wait forever.

“Let us do our yell for you!” laughed B’Wana Don, and three voices merged in a cacophony of idiotic verbalizations designed to evoke vandal berserker cheerleading, practiced together since prepuberty, and a true work of art, until they couldn’t take it anymore and they laughed like they were in their twenties and could do anything.