I like dog-ears

Every time I read something I like to fold the corners of the pages that contain something that the author said that in some way pertains to my life or struck a chord. However, I only do this if the book belongs to me- I would never be so bold as to fold a page of a library book, though I've seen it done before. So, at the end of a fairly long journey (for me, anyway) with Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet, I wanted to share a few of them here just for kicks. Some of you might have already read it, but it never hurts to revisit something great (although I must admit that I enjoyed fury just a tad bit more). There is nothing that I love more than finding a person who can put into words exactly the thing that you wanted to say, but couldn't. Whether it be in a book or a song...a movie or a photograph- there is no contesting that these things have power.

"But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for-liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?'

"What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time."

"The best in our natures is drowning in the worst."

I think we could all agree that this is true. For every dark there is a light; in every being there is both heaven and hell.

"Everything must be made real, step by step, he tells himself. This is a mirage, a ghost world, which becomes real only beneath our magic touch, our loving footfall, our kiss. We have to imagine it into being, from the ground up."

This actually was referring to one of the main characters and his journey from India to England. In some way this passage (in its entirety) reminds me of creating a new identity in a new language. For Ormus, language wasn't an issue, but a lot of the feelings he expressed about it are so similar to feelings I have had here in Spain.

"We underestimate our fellow humans because we underestimate ourselves. They-we- are capable of being much more than we seem. Many of us are able to answer life's darkest questions. We just don't know if we can come up with the answers to the riddles until

we're asked."

"Everywhere there are women sitting alone because of men who will not return...And men also, he adds, longing for women who have gone. Life is a broken radio and there are no good songs."

"Love is intimate democracy, a compact that insists on renewals, and you can be voted out overnight, however big your majority. It's fragile, precarious, and it's all we can get without selling our souls to one party or the other."

"The desire to debunk the extraordinary, the urge to chop off its feet until it fits within the confines of the acceptable, is sired by envy on inadequacy. ... Many of us who are racked by the knowledge of our smallness begrudge the few true heroes their great size."

This could be applied in so many ways, but I think we are all guilty at some time or another of envy when it comes to those around us. Growing up and adulthood seem to alleviate this tendency- but not always.

"Now I know what its like to be inside a laundromat appliance, she joked, but what she was talking about wasn't funny. She was talking about being out of control of your little bit of world, of being betrayed by what you counted on. She was talking about panic and the fragility of being and the skull beneath the skin."

Not sure if any of you can relate to this one, but I sure can. I am thankful that that raw sense of panic and out of control feeling is something of the past and now I am on much more solid ground, but there are times when it seems like yesterday.

"Yet I myself am a discontinuous being, not what I was meant to be, no longer what I was. So I must believe - and in this I have truly become an American, inventing myself anew to make a new world in the company of other altered lives- that there is is thrilling gain in this metamorphic destiny, as well as aching loss."

" When you have no picture of the world, you don't know how to make choices - material, inconsequential or moral. You don't know which way is up, or if you're coming or going, or how many beans make five."

I am not a judge. I am not God or anything close. But I have to say that in the place that I am in at this point in my life, I feel that I can say that I have seen several people that I thought were so close to me make horrible choices, both moral and inconsequential (or so they think), because their world is so small. Traveling and eating ethnic food doesn't make you aware of the world around you, or the importance of trying to learn how to do the right thing. You might say that one has nothing to do with the other... I strongly disagree. I think to truly try to see the big picture... the world through the eyes of another person leads to making good decisions in your life. To those that are no longer in my life, I guess I should say good riddance, but the truth is their absence in my life makes me sad and I feel empty because of it at times. You can't replace family with anger or a grudge and expect to not create consequences.

" In the end I decide it's because although I, we, didn't really know them, they knew us and whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end."

This is kind of in the same vein. I think when someone close to you chooses to betray you, or leave your life for other reasons you really do feel the loss of a part of yourself. I am still trying to figure out who exactly I am without them- it's not as easy as it sounds. Sure, I have my own family now...but how do you forget that there are other people out there who share a part of your history that no longer want to be a part of your future? I haven't figured that part out yet, but I'm working on it.

Okay, that was more than a few, technically speaking. But I really did enjoy this book, regardless of it's difficulty and density. It's funny...this book has nothing specifically to do with the things that it conjures up in me, but there were so many relevant portions. Maybe it's the fact that it deals with loss. Maybe it's just that he's awesome.