I think the best feeling a wife can be made to feel is to know that her husband adores her.
****************************
It's been a long, long while since I've cried from reading a book. Well, it's been a long, long time since I've read Robert James Waller. I've read 'The Bridges of Madison County' and 'Slow Waltz at Cedar Bend' long before. Waller has made me cry each time.
Some scoff at mush and yet... what is it that often reminds us we are human if not the feelings we feel from time to time... feelings beyond our need to relieve ourselves, or satiate our hunger or quench our thirst? And what gives us a glimmer of hope that man might stand a chance if not feelings of compassion, and tenderness... feelings of love? And what greater regret is there than the gnawing feeling that we might have not loved enough... as the loneliest man is he who hasn't ever known what it feels?
Sometimes, to feel is almost a risk... 'and the willingness to take risks is our grasp of faith.'
"So this as it stands, the end of your season on the line and still alone, with the refrigerator's hum laid over the sound of your memories. Last cowboys and all that. Those who hammered out the trace for you going or gone, Iris packing her rainbow and the scholars of the twilight dead. Now, only the sound of your memories and the refrigerator's hum and Nighthawk's tenor on Tuesday nights."
"It might have been different in a different life. Might have worked out for you and the woman. She was your one chance, and yet looking back on what happened, there was no chance at all. You have always known that, probably knew it then."
"The act of going, of leaving what she had, that in itself would have made her a person apart from the one whom you spent those days and nights. Both the decision and the act would have done that. Still, you would have risked it and tried to work things out on the run if she had turned your way."
**************
"Carlisle started to protest, but Kincaid held up one hand, indicating that he had more to say. 'This has to do with a view of life and death that's almost impossible to explain in words. It's more of a gut-level feeling that time and I are old partners, that I'm just another rider on the big arrow. My life is worth no more than what I have done with it, and I've always seen the search for immortality as not only futile but ludicrous, just as elaborate coffins are a pathetic attempt to evade the carbon cycle.'"
**************
"From behind him, along the concourse, he heard the boarding call for a Singapore flight, and out on the tarmac a 747 lined up and began to roll, heading for Jakarta or maybe Bangkok or Calcutta. The agent closed the gantry door behind Carlisle McMillan, and Kincaid shifted his eyes, watching the Boeing sweep upward and disappear in the overcast, content with the thought of a big plane heading for somewhere and that he was no longer alone."
A Thousand Country Roads, Robert James Waller
****************************
It's been a long, long while since I've cried from reading a book. Well, it's been a long, long time since I've read Robert James Waller. I've read 'The Bridges of Madison County' and 'Slow Waltz at Cedar Bend' long before. Waller has made me cry each time.
Some scoff at mush and yet... what is it that often reminds us we are human if not the feelings we feel from time to time... feelings beyond our need to relieve ourselves, or satiate our hunger or quench our thirst? And what gives us a glimmer of hope that man might stand a chance if not feelings of compassion, and tenderness... feelings of love? And what greater regret is there than the gnawing feeling that we might have not loved enough... as the loneliest man is he who hasn't ever known what it feels?
Sometimes, to feel is almost a risk... 'and the willingness to take risks is our grasp of faith.'
"So this as it stands, the end of your season on the line and still alone, with the refrigerator's hum laid over the sound of your memories. Last cowboys and all that. Those who hammered out the trace for you going or gone, Iris packing her rainbow and the scholars of the twilight dead. Now, only the sound of your memories and the refrigerator's hum and Nighthawk's tenor on Tuesday nights."
"It might have been different in a different life. Might have worked out for you and the woman. She was your one chance, and yet looking back on what happened, there was no chance at all. You have always known that, probably knew it then."
"The act of going, of leaving what she had, that in itself would have made her a person apart from the one whom you spent those days and nights. Both the decision and the act would have done that. Still, you would have risked it and tried to work things out on the run if she had turned your way."
**************
"Carlisle started to protest, but Kincaid held up one hand, indicating that he had more to say. 'This has to do with a view of life and death that's almost impossible to explain in words. It's more of a gut-level feeling that time and I are old partners, that I'm just another rider on the big arrow. My life is worth no more than what I have done with it, and I've always seen the search for immortality as not only futile but ludicrous, just as elaborate coffins are a pathetic attempt to evade the carbon cycle.'"
**************
"From behind him, along the concourse, he heard the boarding call for a Singapore flight, and out on the tarmac a 747 lined up and began to roll, heading for Jakarta or maybe Bangkok or Calcutta. The agent closed the gantry door behind Carlisle McMillan, and Kincaid shifted his eyes, watching the Boeing sweep upward and disappear in the overcast, content with the thought of a big plane heading for somewhere and that he was no longer alone."
A Thousand Country Roads, Robert James Waller
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