laugher and forgetting

sometimes i dog-ear books
and sometimes i lose them
sometimes i give them away
the copy of Milan Kundera’s “The Book of Laugher and Forgetting” i have
i found at heartwood, for free
and haven’t read it til now
— it has lots of writing and notes in it from someone else
and though i loved the experience of reading the book
i want to pass it on (not merely because i’ve run out of space for carrying anything else and have been given two books yesterday)
so when/if i read it again
i can read a bare copy.
i’m giving this copy to Sandy– a guy i met about 6 years ago at Lazy Bear
— it’s been a good night of conversation.
anyway
these are the lines i had dog-eared
but the first four chapters were so amazing i could read them over and over…
well… the whole book.
“Once the writer in every individual comes to live (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.”
“… love is a constant interrogation. In fact, i don’t know a better definition of love.”
“.. she feels that love is a privilege and all privileges are undeserved and that why she has to pay.”
” Until now, her sexuality had been occupied by love (I say “occupied” because sex is not love; it is merely the territory love marks out for itself) and therefore had a dramatic, responsible, serious component to it, something Tamina watched over with anguish. Here witht he children in the realm of the insignificant it finally reverted to what it had orginially been: a toy for the production of sensual pleasure.
Or to put it another way, sexuality freed from its diabolical ties with love had become a joy of angelic simplicity.”