The Sheltering Sky

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply part of your being that you, that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless."-Paul Bowles, "The Sheltering Sky"

Update: 12/6/06

Writings inspired by Magic Paula's question: "What is Time?" from the Letter's Lives Group on Flickr.

A nomadic tribe wondering through a labyrinth carried by the wind
An ancestral grid dividing the chronology
the wind whispering its strange language for trees to decipher, transmute and deflect.
The days are a canonical mocking of our small existence.

What is time?
Time is the underlying theme in Paul Bow's novel about travel, love, and cultural difference. I read this book over the holiday break and away from my normal environment. It made me think and feel lonely at the same time. I was jet lagged and in a different time zone, nine hours difference. It's a good book to bring along on a distant trip. I marked it up frequently because I wanted to remember those passages. Usually, I don't like to mark up the book.