Fugitive Pieces

I am re-reading one of the most beautifully-told stories I've ever read. It's a book by Anne Michaels, a poet and professor of creative writing in Toronto that follows three generations of pain and redemption through the aftermath of World War 2. It's title, "Fugitive Pieces."

I'm trying to balance out the grad-school brain, you know, by reading something for fun at night before I sleep. Supposedly, this whole reading before bedtime thing also helps your body to go through the turning-off the lights, setting the thermometer, turning on the dishwasher system it needs to do in order to wind down at night. So, I'm reading.

And, because I am savoring this woman's way with words so much, I thought I'd share a lovely, poetic passage with you: literary chocolate.

"Alone on the roof those nights, it's not surprising that, of all the characters in Athos's tales of geologists and explorers, cartographers and navigators, I felt compassion for the stars themselves. Aching towards us for millennia though we are blind to their signals until it's too late, starlight only the white breath of an old cry. Sending their white messages millions of years, only to be crumpled by the waves."

Sigh ... tonight, I thank God for beauty.

Happy Monday!