“It was more unsettling because it looked and felt quietly wrong, as if some small lever of the universe had been pressed, and here, just for these minutes, nature was reversed, and time with it” (Meagan Adler)

As we experience the awkwardness as Veronica’s family critically continues in their “examination” (pg.30) of the narrator in tonight’s reading, I was particularly intrigued by Veronica’s mother as she foreshadows her daughter’s manipulative manner when she warns the narrator, “Don’t let Veronica get away with too much” (pg.31).  This precautionary advice becomes almost a “secret” (pg.32) that further connects the narrator to Veronica’s mother.  We realize that as the narrator reflects upon his past he is “looking for answers” (pg.34); we say that it is “through looking back” (pg.35) that he starts to see that “it was not the day, but the four of us; that were beginning to unravel” (pg.35).  We are further exposed to Veronica’s cunning ways as she had almost been “calculating” (pg.35) each step of their unnatural relationship; as she almost abruptly turns to Adrian after her breakup with the narrator, the narrator expresses that maybe Veronica had a haunting past that further contributed to her manipulative and controlling ways.  He recalls what Joe Hunt said, “that mental states can be inferred from actions” and analytically expresses, “I think the converse is true; that you can infer past actions from current mental states” (pg.48).  I was particularly intrigued by the part of the reading where the narrator reflects upon his witnessing of the Severn Bore and expresses that “It was more unsettling because it looked and felt quietly wrong, as if some small lever of the universe had been pressed, and here, just for these minutes, nature was reversed, and time with it” (pg.39).  I feel like at this point the narrator reveals the unsettling mystery that inevitably arises when the laws of nature are invalidated.  It is terrifying to have these boundaries, which are created by a manufactured truth, broken down, for we are then left in an infinite universe with no answers.  We need the walls and it is for that very reason that this memory stands distinct in the narrator’s recollection of his past; it was an unsettling image that can never be forgotten because for a moment he was forced to question his existence and significance in an infinite universe.