The Road / Cormac McCarthy

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, don't you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
"To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong." Joseph Chilton Pearce

"If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed,
except by answering: Because it was he, because it was I."
Michel de Montaigne, "Of Friendship"

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

On Chesil Beach

"Then came a searchingly expressive Adagio of consummate beauty and spiritual power. Miss Ponting, in the lilting tenderness of her tone and the lyrical delicacy of her phrasing, played, if I may put it this way, like a woman in love, not only with Mozart, or with music, but with life itself."
     And even if Edward had read that review, he could not have known--no one knew but Florence--that as the house lights came up, and as the dazed young players stood to acknowledge that rapturous applause, the first violinist could not help her gaze traveling to the middle of the third row, to seat 9C.
--From Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach

Why did Edward forget Florence? Why did he not come to her debut performance and sit in seat 9C as he promised? How could he let her down when she played with every pulse in her heart? I was disappointed in Edward. And I can only imagine how much he hurt Florence. Because she played not as if she was in love with life itself, but with Edward only. And she wanted him to know that, but he wasn't there. Didn't even read the review. And how infinitely sad the narrator, to tell this story to me. 
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