a few words

i just finished the unbearable lightness of being which left me feeling pretty hollow inside. so much static on the line between the characters without ever enough resolution. i read this right after reading his book ignorance so i think i was oversaturated with his particular style of dysfunctional relationships. i do love the ideas he explores about our associations with lightness and heaviness and how the latter seems a burden on one hand but can also become ballast against the terrifyingly empty existence of lightness.

i wish i'd marked out some of kundera's words of the above, but the only passage i marked from the rest was one that related to my own life as i turn more directly toward my own goals:

the goals we pursue are always veiled. a girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. the boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. the thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us. sabina was unaware of the goal that lay behind her longing...


and now i have turned next to one of my favorite authors, marilynne robinson, and i confidently say "favorite" after having only read one novel in full and 24 pages of the next. she makes the ephemeral peer out shyly but oh so elegantly from the page and i can never get enough of it. {you can read my posts about housekeeping here and here}

from gilead:

"what have i done? what does it mean?" that was a question that came to me often, not because i felt less than certain i had done something that did mean something, but because no matter how much i thought and read and prayed, i felt outside the mystery of it.