Books I want to read--to be continued

Everything is Illuminated

Extremely Louis and Incredibly Close

Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners

"[They] are apt to be reformers and to want to write because they are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion. They are conscious of problems, not of people, of questions and issues, not of the texture of existence, of case histories and of everything that has a sociological smack, instead of with all those concrete details of life that make actual the mystery of our position on earth" (Mystery and Manners).

"Eyeless in the morning sun you were
 Pale and mild, a modern girl
 Taken with thought, still prone to care"

Up so early the sun can't find me. Tulips outside my window speak of stregenth in joy. Morning comes and I am unafraid.

I imagined yesterday that everyday the trees renew themselves. While the world sleeps they silently draw a deep breath and sweep all the leaves from the ground to cover their cold naked branches.

But, the tree outside this window is growing noticeably bald. I grow old I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Every year I brace myself for the sadness I will feel when the leaves are gone and all that is left is bare. Every year I am wrong. The sense of loss never comes. I only feel joy at the stateliness of their new position. A winter tree sillouetted against the evening sky is as beautifully shocking as the firey red of an October wood.

I, too, brace myself for growing old, for the loss of my youth. For the running out of time. For death. I must be wrong. Maybe the sense of loss will never come. Maybe old age will be as breath-taking as the most lively day of my young years.  And who knows "that when we go out, we shall not go into a day as much greater than your day as your day is greater than my night?"