Monday, October 29, 2007

Good Reading

I'm reading The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis. It's a fantastic (and looooong) story in the form of the found journals of traveler and explorer Maqroll. At one point, he states in his journal the following:

"I realize suddenly that another life has been flowing next to mine. Another life right beside me and I didn't know it. It's there, it goes on, it's composed of all the times I rejected a bend in the road or refused another way out, and the sum total of these moments has formed the blind current of another destiny that could have been mine, and in a sense still is mine, there on the opposite bank that I've never visited although it runs parallel to my ordinary life. Alien it may be, yet is carries all the dreams, illusions, plans, decisions, that are as much mine as this uneasiness I feel, that might have shaped the events of a history taking place now in the limbo of contingency. A history perhaps identical to the one I've lived, yet full of everything that didn't happen here but exists there, taking shape, flowing beside me like ghostly blood that calls my name yet knows nothing of me. The same insofar as I would have been the protagonist and colored it with my usual clumsy foundering, yet completely different in its events and characters."

This part of the fictional Maqroll's journal caught my eye, perhaps because it's a different way of expressing the feelings that have been building in me for the past two or three months. I find myself in a great situation: working in a stable environment with much potential for a long career, living in a city I love and don't want to leave, surrounded by friends, in a serious and wonderful relationship with a person who figures into my future in a big way. And part of me is ecstatic about where I have found myself. But there's another part of me that glances toward that "parallel river" and wonders.

1 comment:

Nacho Lover said...

wow, yes, me too! what a great excerpt. I think about this a lot--things I could have done, things that I've been afraid to do, things that maybe I should do someday...