Alexandersmap

    Tag: Pete Hamill

    • Collecting Evidence

      “I don’t know what that means. To truly live.’
      Kongo paused again, his eyes wandering to the walls of the cave, to the blackness at the far end.
      ‘To find work that you love, and work harder than other men. To learn the languages of the earth, and love the sounds of the words and the things they describe. To love food and music and drink. Fully love them. To love weather, and storms, and the smell of rain. To love heat. To love cold. To love sleep and dreams. To love the newness of each day.”
      ― Pete Hamill, Forever

      If you’ve never read Forever by Pete Hamill, consider it worthy of your time. I wander back to it now and then, when I think of Cormac and Thunder leaping towards their destiny in the New World. I have no business re-reading it now, with so many books awaiting my attention, and yet it found me again anyway.

      How do we live? The proof will unfold daily, in our choices. It’s in who we reach out to and how we react to our awareness of the world’s general indifference to us. We are here to master the self, not the universe. Personal excellence, that old friend Arete, will always be just over that next rise in the hill. Never fully realized. And yet we may live and grow and become something more profound than who we’ve started our day with.

      Indeed, this day is entirely new. And ours to perhaps fully embrace or maybe waste in our usual offhand way. “The proof will be in your living”, Kongo later says in that enchanting chapter of that magical novel that I keep returning to now and again. And indeed, life unfolds thusly. What will we look back on one day, thinking of today’s climb? May the newness of this day provoke us to collect evidence of a worthy ascent.

    • The Proof Will Be In Your Living

      “I don’t know what that means. To truly live.’…
      ‘To find work that you love and work harder than other men. To learn languages of the earth, and love the sounds of the words and the things they describe. To love food and music and drink. Fully love them. To love weather, and storms, and the smell of rain. To love heat. To love cold. To love sleep and dreams. To love the newness of each day.’
      He stared at his hands.
      ‘To love women. To pleasure them. To make them laugh. To be foolish for them. To respect them. To listen to them’ He paused. ‘They are the lifegivers. To live is to love them’
      ‘You will see,’ he said. ‘The proof will be in your living”
      ― Pete Hamill, Forever

      Forever is one of those books that I’ve come back to a few times, and I celebrate the magic Pete Hamill weaves into the novel. We must weave magic into our own lives, mustn’t we? Books do that for us, even when the world itself doesn’t always measure up.

      I’ve returned to reading the stack of fiction that’s been mocking my time with business and history books. I give a nod here to Forever, but my attention is on novels new to me that spin their own magic. Perhaps I’ll quote them in the blog, but certainly I’ll learn something from each writer’s style. What is your writing style? And is there enough magic weaved in to transform the reader?

      The central character in Forever is a man named Cormac O’Connor who comes to New York City and lives forever as long as he doesn’t leave the island of Manhattan. When you live forever you get a chance to accumulate experiences and languages, master a musical instrument or two, navigate a few relationships from beginning to end, and reinvent yourself every new day. There’s joy and pain inherent in watching people come and go in your life, there’s accumulated wisdom of bringing each day’s lesson home with you.

      You and I won’t live forever. But we too can accumulate our share of experiences and celebrate the newness of each day. We too can weave magic into our lives. Ultimately, the proof will be in our living.