Poison - The World According to Garp by John Irving

“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.” – TS Garp, The World According to Garp

Kids keep growing long after they’ve reached the end of their pants.  Kinetic growing.  The cuff succumbs: around the heel, over the ankle and up the calf.  But perhaps kids’ pants were supposed to slither a life from below the heel to above the malleoli.  Then! they end.  Then! the kid grows. 

I can’t grow and that is why I never finish anything.  Maybe I already grew.  My pant bottoms stopped inching upward.  In fact, they stopped millimetering.  Stuck.  A heavy mind thinks about finishing.  I’m out of practice.  Static complacency stiffens me.  Need growing oil?

Garp was wrong?  Maybe you only get to the end of something by beginning something else.  And growing is independent of this altogether.  Maybe starting the next thing finishes the last thing.  Not stamped and boxed, but shelved.  Potential finish.  I wonder if returning undoes my growing.  Getting younger?  Finishing the unfinished, my unfinished, finishes.

Poison Dart Frog