Things that go bump in my head.

As is probably apparent, I am still not writing. But I am reading and reading and reading. There are few things as gratifying as discovering a kindred soul on a page (not that kindred souls in flesh and blood aren't worth their weight in Prosac.) Sometimes we read to connect with other hearts and minds, across the globe and across the centuries, and sometimes we read to connect with ourselves. On occasion we find someone has so precisely articulated a thing that it feels we've only just then learned something about ourselves that has been true forever. I've uncovered bits of myself in Dosteovsky's fiction, Adam Zagajewski's poetry, Frederick Buechner's prose, Borges' dreams, Brian Greene's theories, Over the Rhine's lyrics, Thomas Merton's meditations, Rebecca Solnit's essays and even Philip Glass's textless compositions. To come across these slices of recognition is to be, for a moment, known and understood. And to realize there are companions on the journey, your journey, who "get it," whatever your "it" might be. For whatever thankless struggles, sacrifices and dark nights it took for those individuals to get those works accomplished so I would not be alone, so that I could push on, so that I could rejoice, I here say Thank You.

And for those of you who will understand this bit, you know who you are (and I do, too):
Some people even seem to have been born with it. They grow up trying to adjust themselves to the values and strivings that surround them, but somehow their hearts are never in it. They have a deep awareness that fulfillment cannot be found through acquisition and achievement. They often feel like misfits because of the different, deeper, ungraspable love they feel inside them. For them, the journey is not so much toward realization of their desire as toward being able to claim the desire they already have in a culture that neither understands nor supports it.
~Gerald May, The Dark Night of the Soul