what we're capable of

While doing my hair, I watched a Korean TV show called Vampire Prosecutor 2. The show is Law and Order: Criminal Intent + Interview with a Vampire + Stand By Me (okay and liberal eyeliner). This season hasn't been as arresting as the first, but today there was a scene where the autopsy doctor threatens a child-trafficker for info about a kidnapped girl. The doctor speaks about the many times he's met the family of a dead person, how they cry and cry. It took me back to the emergency room in 2001, because autopsy doctor is right. And then I started crying. This is why I love fiction. I've learned so much about life through books, so much about people I will never meet, and even if I did meet them, I would never know them the way it's possible to know someone in a book. I learn so much about who I am and who other people are from books.

People people everywhere.

I'm reading Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving. John Irving's novels are monsters. They're super dense and super long. I'm a very fast reader, but his novels take me weeks. Still, take this quote -

"What Danny had desired in his wife only filled him now with revulsion- and this had taken a mere two years to transpire. (The loving-her part would last a little longer; neither Danny nor any other writer could ever explain that.)" -302

This is the aspect of break-ups that started this blog. Knowing the person isn't right, but loving them anyway, uncontrolled. I'm not saying I loved the guy, but I could feel the potential. And that's what's so exciting about relationships, not just romantic ones- potential. And then it surprises you- how close you get, and how far apart you'll always be. When you push and find that no matter how hard, it's not enough, or that you didn't need to push so hard, that you can stop now, or that you can't push any more, that you hate it, that you love your friend anyway. I think people are capable of loving very easily. Not of falling in love easily, but of loving someone, of reaching the point where you care, the point where you protect them. Or maybe that's just me. I've been reading, and so I know I'm soft.

The first thing I do when I open a book is smell it.

Ran today. My legs felt weak, buuuuut I did 25 push-ups! And I saw the friendliest man, walking his dog. He smiled at me and asked me how I was, and I instantly liked him. Instant like is rare.