upswing

It seems as though I am having a very hard time getting back into my normal life.  It’s been a while, I know.  Vacation was wonderful, chock-full of favorite people (sadly, not everyone), mini-adventures, and good stories.  I want to want to write, but my bed is calling me.  And so, for now, on the topic of stories:

It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secrets of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets.  The Great Stories are the ones that you have heard and want to hear again.  The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably.  They don’t decieve you with thrills and trick endings.  They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen.  They are as familiar as the house you live in.  Or the smell of your lover’s skin.  You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t.  In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t.  In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t.  And yet you want to know again.  That is their mystery and their magic.

–The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I love this quote.  It’s not really applicable to anything (although, I guess it could be applicable to everything if you stretch it far enough), I just kept thinking about it on the overnight bus back to Philly this morning.  John knows I love it.  I marked this passage in his copy–The God of Small Things makes an excellent holiday gift.  He later incorporated it into our proposal, which I remember surprisingly clearly considering I was still hopped up on percocet after an unexpected trip to the ER.  He kept asking me how long it had been since I had taken a tablet; he wanted to make sure I could give informed consent.  Sweet, ethical kid.

More, better stories tomorrow.  A pig named Celeste and a goat named Ethel might be involved.  And then, of course, on to Mod 2!  Woot!