Chatwin's Folded Pages

Saturday night, soon to be Sunday. Adjusted a Web app for a client today, then ate a steak with salad. Labbie Walt and I went for a walk. Leaves have finally fallen from trees, and the wind in Mason Neck blows them about.

Before I fall asleep these nights, I pick up a book, as always. And lately it's been the re-reading of nomad Bruce Chatwin, a Brit who left the society of Sotheby's so he could wander around the world to see what was really going on.

I originally found Bruce Chatwin in a bookstore, his tome on a table marked "for $2.00 or less." It was a book about Welsh brothers called On the Black Hill. It was his only work officially marked "fiction." I didn't want it to end.

There may be better writers in this world, but this man tells great stories. When he was a child, he discovered "a piece of brontosaurus" on display in his grandmother's "glass-fronted dining room cabinet." This treasure was "thick and leathery, with strands of course, reddish hair." It was a creature that "lived in Patagonia." His grandmother's cousin, "Charley Milward the Sailor, found it." Eventually the experience sparked a book called In Patagonia. I hope some day you get the chance to read it.

What I like about Chatwin is that he makes me fold the page corners of his books. An action spawned by a phrase I want to remember, wish I had written, a few words I can return to that make me think. While reading "Among the Ruins" last night, he wrote about a man named Axel Munthe, a Swedish physician descended from Scandinavian "bishops and burgomasters" who made an escape to the island of Capri. There he bought a villa, and made it into his own. Chatwin quotes Munthe:

"The place is small. It was built by me on the principle that the soul needs more room than the body..."

The soul needs more room than the body. When taking that sentence to heart, how can anyone on this planet need to be kept hostage, in business, or in life?

Comments

[Phyllis Ross]

Hi, Mare - - A perfect example of someone who has decided not to be kept "...a hostage in business, or in life" is the gentleman who lives in the cardboard box in the streets of Alexandria, and yells, "Hey, Mary!" to every woman who walks down the street. Please tell me that you're not planning to join him in his cardboard box.
Love,
Phyll

[David Mankin]

Mary's post - high-quality writing

Phyllis' reply - PRICELESS!

Thanks, Ladies