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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Saturday, February 12, 2005

entry arrow12:34 AM | Something Pre-Valentine

In this passage from Brian Morton's wonderful Starting Out in the Evening, Leonard Schiller, an aging, failed novelist goes to Paris to keep a promise he made with his wife that they visit the spot -- the Eiffel tower -- where they first met, forty years later. In the interim, however, she died, and he alone goes to complete the appointment:

There was nothing, of course. She hadn't made the journey. But even so, it seemed to him that the air where he sat was charged, alive. He had been looking forward to this appointment so deeply, for so long, that the spot itself seemed to have been affected by his longing. It was hard to understand how the tourists bustling around him could fail to notice that there was something different about this patch of space: that it was charged, that it was saturated with love....

It seemed right that they had arranged to meet at this spot, near this monument, this huge and beautiful cliche. It seemed right because of what they had discovered about it many years ago: when you were in this city, you could never lose it. You could be wandering around through narrow winding streets in some unfamiliar district, utterly disoriented, and suddenly, when you turned a corner, you'd see it in the distance, glittering in the smokeless air. You could never lose it. It was always near. Exactly like you, my love. Exactly like you.

What romantic literary passage did you take to heart this Valentine's Day?


[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich




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