Wednesday, May 18, 2016

"He Who Limps Is Still Walking"- Stanislaw J. Lec


There's (possibly) Luke Skywalker and Violet, perched up on the baby coop. Can you see Violet's fuzzy little feathered feet? She is gonna be a looker, that one.
Luke's no slouch himself.

Quiet, quiet day. Long, hard walk and some house stuff and then a nap with reading because I can't seem to read or sleep enough these days and then some ironing and that, my friends, was that.


I pass this on my walk. It's a downed and very old tree, almost driftwood-like in appearance. You can't get the scale from the picture, but it's very large. One of my walking-gods. 

I am listening to this book now.


I have finally and truly started downloading my audio books from the library and I am mostly incredibly pleased at the ease and the quality of the results. The app I use (Overdrive) seems a bit messy to me but I am learning my way around it. Anyway, I love this book. It is so bittersweet and so human and so tender. You know how when you read some books you want to remember certain lines because they are completely and utterly poetically beautiful? And then some books when you read, you want to remember certain lines because they are just TRUE? 
This one has some of both but more of the true ones. 
Despite what I wrote yesterday about my despair at where humanity seems to be headed, there are things which give me hope, and books like this are one of those. It is the story of a pilgrimage, as one might infer from the title, and it seems to me that the idea of a pilgrimage is a cross-cultural and time-honored human thing. It was not new when Chaucer began writing the Canterbury Tales in the late 14th century and people still take them for religious reasons, for health reasons, for spiritual reasons, for reasons of adventure, for reasons which can hardly be explained. And this is the story of an almost accidental one, taken by a man in his mid-sixties who had given up on any hope of finding peace or happiness in his life. His walk, his pilgrimage, changes not only himself but the people he meets and the people he left behind. 
It is a lovely book. 
I am enjoying it. It is sustaining me. 

I don't have much else to say. I am pondering things, I am processing things. I am swimming with my nose just above the waterline. 
I am walking through it all. 

Here's a quote from this website. 

"I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes
my rage, forgetting everything."
~Pablo Neruda, translated. 

Love...Ms. Moon




5 comments:

  1. I use overdrive to download to my nook and have for years. I really like it. It's such a nice option when I don't feel like going to the physical library.

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  2. I love that quote! And chicken pics are always good. Violet has beautiful feet.

    We use Overdrive in our library, too. I don't really know my way around it too well since I still read everything on paper! (Except the newspaper, which I read online. I have gotten THAT far, at least.)

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  3. I don't listen to audio books mostly because I don't have a player for them. I could use my iPad I guess but our library only has one copy of downloadable books and the wait lists are long. I'd just as soon get the physical copy.

    unlike you, I don't hold much hope out for humanity.

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  4. Jill- So true.

    Steve Reed- Well, I wish you were an expert so you could advise me sometimes! And I'm still reading real books with my eyes.

    Ellen Abbott- I don't hold out a great deal of hope but sometimes I am reminded that there are some very fine humans still left on this planet.

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  5. We read that book in book club and for me, the story drug on and on (like a fucking pilgrimage is supposed to, that was not lost on me) but it ended up being one of my favorite books ever!

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