Every now and then you read a book full of sentences that make you stop and ponder just how great they really are. How beautiful the words and the meaning and how brilliant the author whose mind and fingers put them on to the page.
Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin” was one of those books for me. It’s a beautiful collection of stories woven together in a special way and it’s one of the best novels I’ve read in quite some time. Full of those very kind of sentences to which I refer.
The sentences below happened to be some of them. As I read this passage, I realized I’d never had someone so succinctly summarize the desire for a perfect day the way McCann had with these words. And as I sit here on a drizzly, dreary Sunday in sweatpants, listen to the whirs of the dishwasher, the clink of clothes drying and unwind after my first wedding of the season with a book and a hot cup of tea, they come to mind once more. That, my friends, is the power of the written word.
“He was happy, give or take. He was lucky, give or take. He didn’t have everything he wanted, but he had enough. Yes, that’s what he wanted: just a quiet afternoon of nothingness.“
Amidst the chaos of daily life, may you find your own version of a quiet afternoon of nothingness. I assure you, mine is pretty divine.
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by Gail Werner
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