I’m starting something new today. We’ll call it “Passages,” and it’s related to my recent “What are you reading?” post. I’d like to toss out a favorite sentence or paragraph from a book, poem, or essay. Maybe you’ll see something you like. Maybe you’ll want to dig out a favorite of yours and post something in the comments. I’ll do these toward the end of the week and if you decide to share your own passage, we can all take a look on a lazy Thursday or Friday during a coffee break, or with our routine Sunday bagel, or whenever feels nice.
I have some other projects going today and tomorrow so this is it for me until next week.
Here’s a paragraph from Elizabeth McCracken’s “The Giant’s House.” When I read it, I said, “That’s me!” I’m sure you’ve all had those moments with a book. That’s part of what keeps us reading, I think…the instants when a description or scene captures a feeling perfectly.
I am not a person who likes to be touched casually, which means of course that I like it a great deal. Every little touch takes on great meaning–oh, I could catalog them all for you: the bus driver who offered his hand as I stepped down from his bus, his other hand hovering near but not touching the small of my back. My flirtatious college friend who could not keep her hands off of anyone, who flicked one restless finger on the back of my wrist, on my forearm. Handshakes. Because I am short, certain tall people cannot resist palming my head; one college boyfriend stroked my hair so often in the early days of our courtship that, crackling with static, I could have clung to the wall like a child’s balloon.
My list would go on forever, and still it would be shorter than other people’s, because those tentative friendly fingers make me stiffen, and by the time I realize I’ve done it and try to relax, the hands are gone. People get the idea. The better they know me, the less they touch me.
I’ve never been able to put that feeling into words (well, minus the short, head-palming part). But there it is.
I don’t know the etiquette or rules for posting blurbs like this. So I hope this appeases the copyright and writerly gods: You can find “The Giant’s House” at Amazon and Powell’s, and many other bookstores, I’m sure. I think you’ll like it.
Feel free to tell us whatever caught your attention lately.
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My taste in reading skews towards easy beach reading, such as the all-dialogue, no-thinking-required Robert B. Parker books. One line in one of these books (who can remember the titles–there are, like, 30 of them) goes like this: “She was often wrong, yet never uncertain.” So succinct! I love how it just sums up about 90% of the people I know (including me).
I also like the word “numpty,” as used in the Harry Bosch books by Michael Connelly.
Numpty has become a common word in these parts.
I am often wrong, and often uncertain.
One of my favorite books is A Live Coal in the Sea by Madeline L’Engle, and one of my favorite quotes in that book is, “When we resist the love of God, it is as though we are walking up to the waves on the beach with our small burning cinders, wondering if the ocean will be enough to put them out.”
I know it is cheesy and fluffy and all that kind of stuff, but it’s something someone who tends to over-think and over-analyze and over-worry needs to remember, even without the God language.
Or, as Calvin would say:
“I’M SIGNIFICANT! Screamed the dust speck.”
…maybe this one, too:
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
— Carl Sagan
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