picture in my mind

I came across a book, that ended up feeling like a korean drama series -- because it gripped me through all of its plot meanderings, until it threw me disappointingly off a cliff at the end. So anti-climactic! Ah, it annoys the heck out of me when something isn't wrapped up nicely, and especially when everything that went before was beautiful and moving.

This was a wonderful love story, that hid a splat at the end -- but regardless, left a great impression on me. It reminds me of the famous "The Time Traveller's Wife", but maybe even more intriguing. It tells the story of a man called Daniel, whose soul has lived and died and lived again countless times since 520 A.D., and been the only soul who appears to remember all these past lives. And of course, he remembers the same girl through all the hundreds of years -- while regrettably, the girl does not. Talk about pining of epic proportions.



"One thing I can tell you from my unusual perspective is how powerfully our souls reveal themselves in our faces and bodies. Just sit on a train sometime and look at the people around you. Choose a person's face and study it carefully. All the better if they are old and a stranger to you. Ask yourself what you know about that person, and if you open yourself to the information, you will find you know an overwhelming amount. We naturally guard ourselves from the obvious truths of strangers around us, so be warned. You can get overstimulated and uneasy if you really start to look. One of the skills of living is simplifying as you go, so when you let your guard down, the complexity is troubling. There are certain rare people you find -- usually they are healers or poets or people who work with animals -- who live their lives in this state, and I admire them and sympathize with them, but I am not like them anymore. I've done a lot of simplifying in my life."

-- My Name Is Memory, by Ann Brashares