"A child can always teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires."
-The Fifth Mountain by Paulo Coelho
"I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more than he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals (an explanation that each of them would at least find acceptable), but also (and this is more painful to admit) because they don't hold the same importance for each other. When __1___ saw ___2___ at the ______, s/he(1) remembered every detail of their long-ago adventure; s/he(2) remembered nothing. From the very first moment their encounter was based on an unjust and revolting inequality."
- Ignorance by Milan Kundera
Think about that next time you run into an ex-, a high school or college friend, or anybody you've ever met; ever.
Needless to say, yet somehow I still am saying it, I read Ignorance and The Fifth Mountain in full, and finished The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman at the Dennys. Though entertaining, the night will be remembered more for the mad dash across I-5 (why don't they have sidewalks to airports?) with an overstuffed backpack (part of Vagabond 06) and an unwieldy bag of 16 books I'd accumulated from DC, WV, CA, OR, WA, and Canada during said Vagabond Adventure 2006.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment