song of the week: dream theater, the count of tuscany
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4yzYKIiV9Y&t=11m0s
"things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. it's like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful."
-reiko ishida, norwegian wood
i've been here long enough to have had a long break from thinking about girls, and then to have a think about it again. it's good to be out here, in the quiet to be quiet. but it being so quiet, it just happens you start to listen to quieter things, like bird noises, frog noises, tree noises, and your own noises. and to listen to one's own breathing leads, quite often, to introspection.
i read gabriel garcia marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, which is now my second favourite book in the whole wide world. he really is the master of insight into people's emotions, feelings between people, of oneself; which, married with his inimitable, absolutely magnificent grasp of writing, produces truly remarkable writing. there were so many phrases i had to pause at to gasp in wonder, to breathlessly admire. and to think it was translated from the spanish! well, it's only behind norwegian wood, and followed, albeit at a distance, by the great gatsby. quite a trio, i think.
anyway, i've thought, or have been thinking, about, let's call her Jill, more that i suspected i would. she was the second girl i've ever fallen in love with, but that was almost four years ago. and yet, with my hand on my heart, i still think we would have made it all the way. we would have. we would have been something. but it's not in our fate.
and like johnny depp says, you know, if you've fallen in love with two women, you pick the second, because you wouldn't have fallen in love with the second if etc. etc. but it's not so simple, is it? i don't think so, because nobody knows what love is, not even after love in the time of cholera do i know what it is or isn't. but maybe that's what the book is trying to say too.
and do i love, let's call her, say, Scarlett, do i love her? yes, i think so. i'm willing to admit (profess, whatever) that i like her, that i like her more than i imagine, but after all this time, having done all that i have, i still haven't got a rough idea how it will turn out. giving up was never an option, and it's still not, no. life's a journey, right? but here's the pickle, right, and this is me thinking in her head, if up till now you haven't been able to change my mind, then how are you ever going to, my boy?
ah, love and its senseless illusions.
“to him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. he had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”
