Three things:
I've been thinking quite a lot since I've been here on just how we change as we accummulate life experiences, and I've come to think that experiencing new things is quite a lot like making a new key-hole in the door of your personality. The proposition comes alive for me when I remember how my mom is able to talk to any British expatriate about her years in London, or how Matt lights up when somebody in a three-hundred mile radius talks about Machu Pichu, or how Jennifer can still recall near-perfectly everything she loved about Stonehenge to anyone with anything close to a foreign accent. And so, I've been thinking quite a lot about how delicious it is that our life experiences enable us so many locks to fit people's keys.
On a different note, I managed to get yelled at while trying to buy a Spanish-verb book at the bookstore because the woman couldn't understand me. I couldn't help but register the irony that, had I the book already, I just may have been able to explain to her what I needed.....
Lastly, I wanted to include a snippet from Virginia Woolf's book, "To the Lighthouse" which I've been reading with appetite (thanks to Mark Luprecht). I think the following quote is perhaps the best contemplation on the experience of time I've ever read in my entire life: "With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta's arm and left the room, it changed, shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past."
I've been thinking quite a lot since I've been here on just how we change as we accummulate life experiences, and I've come to think that experiencing new things is quite a lot like making a new key-hole in the door of your personality. The proposition comes alive for me when I remember how my mom is able to talk to any British expatriate about her years in London, or how Matt lights up when somebody in a three-hundred mile radius talks about Machu Pichu, or how Jennifer can still recall near-perfectly everything she loved about Stonehenge to anyone with anything close to a foreign accent. And so, I've been thinking quite a lot about how delicious it is that our life experiences enable us so many locks to fit people's keys.
On a different note, I managed to get yelled at while trying to buy a Spanish-verb book at the bookstore because the woman couldn't understand me. I couldn't help but register the irony that, had I the book already, I just may have been able to explain to her what I needed.....
Lastly, I wanted to include a snippet from Virginia Woolf's book, "To the Lighthouse" which I've been reading with appetite (thanks to Mark Luprecht). I think the following quote is perhaps the best contemplation on the experience of time I've ever read in my entire life: "With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta's arm and left the room, it changed, shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past."
2 comments:
Hahaha-- I left a post earlier, (without yet even reading your post): "Rahim is SEXY." THEN I realized that it was posted under "Jeffery"... the kid I'm staying with!! Now that I come back to leave a real post, I see the blog administrator has already deleted it! Man they are on TOP of things in blog world!!!
Your thoughts made me think of this quote I read at my Gram's house. I copy it for you here:
"You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens." -Ethel Barrymore
I love the key metaphor: I also think it's beautiful that one doesn't have to travel to expand their indignancy, though with travel it is inevitable. It's like how when in Tennessee, I love anyone who lives on the west coast. We cling to what we know, so we might as well "know" as much as possible.
Much love from the Manjito Cult here in the U.S.
;)
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