Tuesday, July 6, 2010

She's Gonna Dream Up the World She Wants to Live In..

His DVD is not there. Disappointed, unfulfilled, not wanting to return to the office just yet, he wanders between the bookshelves and on the spur of the moment decides to borrow a book. It occurs to him that he almost always borrows a book because he "heard it was good", or "knows the author", or "always wanted to read this one". When was the last time he picked something up without knowing anything about it, and finished reading it? At this point he laments the deliberate nature of his life, and panics that he has lost the ability to make instant decisions; to just know what he wants. He makes a promise to borrow a book by an unknown author, based purely on the blurb.

On the bus home, he gets to know the stranger. The tale is not as visceral as a Woolf, nor as intricate as a Tolkien, but the pages turn and turn. The story tells of a girl in the Witness Protection Program. She drifts from name to name, Middletown to Middletown. She can forge no identity of her own, so she lives vicariously through the people she sees. At night she repeats her name to herself... the anchor.. but she also retreats to the family she can never have in the home she can never set up.. the sails...

<Esc> <Shift> :wq

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