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I always try to carry a book with me especially if a long flight from New York to Santa Cruz is planned. When I arrived to the airport a few weeks ago I had the feeling that I was forgetting something. I checked the essentials once again and everything seemed to be in place. Well, in the metaphorical sense because I was a wreck that day: sad, depressed and having some weird thoughts about planes crashing down. (Talking about suicidal thoughts!)
Finally I realized that I have forgotten my book in the car. Duh! A nice way to start the long trip back home. I looked for a bookstore and I was decided to find something amazing and I did! The elegance of the Hedgehog is a book not only beautifully written with a simple plot but so deep and touching. I finished it days ago but I'm still thinking about it. That always happens to me when something cause an impact on me, I have to digest it and then I can emerge with some sort of rational opinion about it.
But nah!...
My feelings, my emotions, my tears and laughs is what make this book resonate days after. Those moments when you feel the beauty of an idea expressed eloquently with precise words...aahh! that's the beauty of literature. Words that move you to tears and make your own interior world so rich and interesting not only to yourself but for everyone who wants to see it.
I wonder who will be the person that I will share all of these? I wonder if he exists. I knew someone who once told me he would share it with me always. He is gone now.
There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.
Muriel Barbery
The elegance of the Hedgehog
