grasping for quotations

 Labor Day

"The land seeks deep inside each person so as to gather together all their dreams.  Yes, we could say that life is the seamstress of dreams."  190 in Sleepwalking Land

a link there, the land, the earth, back to Handke's geologies and walking.  

miraginations   mirages  

Darlene stopped, bringing a small pot of yellow mums to cheer us up over the vanishing of our cruise dreams.  She also told of Joan Berstrom's terrible fall on her steps in the blueberry hill apartments a few days or weeks ago.  Broken bones; now in a rehab center in Milford.  Her son looking in, perhaps will care for her further.  

"Giddified, existentially retarded, she went on turning and twirling, moaning  all the while."  201

the notebooks  "Blown by a wind born not from the air but from the ground itself, the sheets scatter along the road.  Then, one by one, the letters turn into grains of sand, and little by little, all my writings are transformed into pages of earth."   

last passage, the end, beautiful image, incredible sadness  12:35 pm  

653 "it's strangely relaxing, isn't it?"   Max Lawton discussing The Beginnings  on page 653 of the book

back to it   out of Africa Mozambique   

Catholic vs Protestant schools of Translation!!  who knew??? 

booking the cruise expanded mind and imagination across the map, at the same time our daily lives contracted more and more over the past few weeks and months, even while the kids were here, working through their routines and dramas,  Ours were contracting and now with diagnosis hinted and about to arrive tomorrow morning we can even wonder of the contricted aorta, its valve, has brought the constriction, if our daily routines respond to it as to weather movements.  The air outside this evening, right now and all day, has been that splendid dry forest mountain cold air from the north, early September tasting already of early October.  

Going back to Moresco from Couto feels a similar expansion after contraction.  Couto packed enormous desperation into a slim line of anecdotes, tales, short scenes, compressed allusions, symbols, mythic echos.  The wars he was surviving so horrendous as to be beyond words of any kind.  Moresco has all the time in the world, all the space, vast canvas upon which to slowly trace figures and letters.  strangely relaxing is indeed correct, strangely so.  Trauma tightens, Couto, binds; ecstasy releases in preparation for song, endless song.