We read Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter for book club the other night. It includes three novellas, one of which is about a relationship between Miranda, a journalist, and Adam, a soldier on leave just before being shipped overseas.
Someone in the group brought up the following passage that I've been chewing on for the past couple of days:
He had showed her snapshots of himself at the wheel of his roadster; of himself sailing a boat, looking very free and windblown, all angles, hauling on the ropes. . . . Miranda knew he was trying to tell her what kind of person he was when he had his machinery with him. She felt she knew pretty well what kind of person he was, and would have liked to tell him that if he thought he had left himself at home in a boat or an automobile, he was much mistaken.
What is it about us humans? We're always getting our identities entangled with our physical stuff. I know that I have spent the better part of the past year trying to unravel myself from my identity as a bookstore owner and from my daily routine of chatting with customers, mining for treasures to order in and share, and keeping the back office from spinning out of control.
Who on earth am I without my happy little bookstore? Intellectually I know that I didn't leave myself behind when we closed up shop, but spiritually and emotionally there are many days I'm not so sure.
1 comment:
Boy Marg, do I know what you mean. 25 plus years at AGI and I still dream about it occasionally, though not very happy ones. I also dream occasionally about my 11 years in my own print shop and often feel like I should never have sold it. But that leads me to my recent move up (down?) here to Maine after living 63 years within a one mile (or so) radius in Connecticut. I don't feel any ties to back there. I've not dreamt about it yet. Maine is a totally new start, a new me. Oh, I did bring "things" that are from my past but ... well, that was then and this is now.
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