Words on a page

I have been swallowing books whole on this trip, it's been great. Traveling alone gives me much time to read, whether it's waiting for trains, eating a meal, sitting at a cafe, or enjoying a beer under the sun. And plenty of time to think - sometimes too much. It's both a blessing and a curse.

I managed to finish Penguin's History of Europe, The Alchemist, Life of Pi, and I'm half way through Love in the Time of Cholera. I have much to say about each of them, but right now as I am reading Love in the Time of Cholera, I cannot help but be deeply moved. What hauntingly beautiful, melancholic writing! His expositions on loss and love, whether it's capturing the acute pangs of spurned, unrequited love or the fickle nuances of a woman's love and spite, are simply exquisite. And his quotes! This man is a poet with prose; his delectable quotes are sprinkled throughout pages of lolling, beautiful writing, like gems scattered along a beach of fine, ivory sand. Some of my favorites so far

"For curiosity is but one of the many masks that love wears..."

"...human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."

"...that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks for this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past."

and many, many more.

And Florentino Ariza! How I identify with how he feels, down to every last emotion, thought, and utterance. Its uncanny parallel of reality is eerie, almost surreal. Does art imitate life, or life imitate art? Or are they all really one and the same, as "all the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players", and so I am merely playing a part as well, in this grand farce of life...