truth and beauty

what she wanted was love, and the best way to go looking for it was through sex. but it never worked that way, and the sex just made her lonelier. i understood that, as it had made me lonelier too. i couldn’t ever remember being lonely before, certainly not in this way, until i had seen the edge of all the ways you could be with another person, which brought up all the myriad of ways that person could never be there for you.

- ann patchett, truth & beauty.

c did this program at smith over j-term, and they read this book. she was telling us about it. and probably cause i was the most receptive / thought i might actually read it, she gave me her copy and told me to read it. this is when i was up to my eye balls in thesis / regular course readings. and it sat on top of my fridge for a month or two, then got packed with the rest of my books. nino had requested some books, so when i was in ct i routed through my grandmother’s attic (aka my storage space), this book was sitting on top of some other ones and i grabbed it thinking i needed commuting books anyway. i started it this morning on the train. and it has consumed my day.

that quote has haunted me all day, mainly because it’s so beautiful and true.

it was also an interesting book to read while starting your first day at a job you need desperately to pay the bills but is painfully clear you are over qualified for. especially before they sort of “make it” – the narrator is working as a waitress and living with her mother. and talking about keeping her desire to write going. and it’s so damn palpable. i tried to read bel canto two summers ago and could never get started, but i love her writing so much here, maybe i will try again. and now j has recommended it to me and confirmed the hard to start beautiful at the end diagnosis.

i will end with one of my other favorite quotes from the book:

lucy’s loneliness was breathtaking in its enormity. if she emptied out grand central station and filled it with people she knew well, the people who loved her, there would be more than a hundred people there. but a hundred people in such a huge space just rattle around…you could pack in thousands and thousands more people, and still it wouldn’t feel full, not full enough to take up every square inch of her loneliness. lucy thought that all she needed was one person, the right person, and all the empty space would be taken away from her. but there was no one in the world who was big enough for that.

(i originally wrote this on 8.06.07 but i’m reposting here pretty much entirely. hence the first day of work reference)