Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Anniveraries, regrets, Paul Theroux

Oct. 17 is an anniversary of sorts. So is Oct. 19, and so is Oct. 22. Long live three years of incredible happiness -- raucous times and all. I look forward to many, many more. Baby, I prize and adore you.

The joy I feel today makes me wish I could share it with long-lost friends ... people departed through mutual stubbornness and misunderstandings. If only I could reach out. If only they would.

On a more literary note, I'm just finishing up The Pillars of Hercules by Paul Theroux. A few passages I love:

"Cold and unsettled at the edge of this desert, feeling thwarted, this enforced isolation filled my mind with memories of injustice -- put-downs, misunderstandings, unresolved disputes, abusive remarks, rudeness, arguments I had lost, humiliations. Some of these instances went back many years. For a reason I could not explain, I thought of everything that had ever gone wrong in my life. I kept telling myself, 'So what?' and 'Never mind,' but it was no good. I could not stop the flow of unpleasant images, and I was tormented."

"Places had voices that were not their own; they were backdrops to a greater drama, or else to something astonishingly ordinary, like the ragged laundry hung from the nave of a plundered Crusader church in Tartus on the Syrian coast. Most of the time, traveling, I had no idea where I was going. I was not even quite sure why. I was no historian. I was not a geographer. I hated politics. What I liked most was having space and time; getting up in the morning and setting off for a destination which, at any moment -- if something compelled my attention -- I could abandon. I had no theme. I did not want one. I had set out to be on the Mediterranean, without a fixed program. I was not writing a book -- I was living my life, and had found an agreeable way to do it."

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