I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocentlyโฆbut all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.
Michael OndaatjeThat's one of the great sadnesses of any life - knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then.
Michael OndaatjeYou built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her.
Michael OndaatjeIn the desert the most loved waters, like a lover's name, are carried blue in your hands, enter your throat. One swallows absence.
Michael OndaatjeโฆEven the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimeter of haze just above the inked fibers of a map, that pure zone between land and chart, between distances and legends, between nature and storyteller. The place they had chosen to come to, to be their best selves, to be unconscious of ancestry. Here, apart from the sun compass and the odometer mileage, and the book, he was alone, his own invention. He knew during these times how the mirage worked, the fata morgana, for he was within it.
Michael Ondaatje