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| source: The Book Book |
" 'One's real life is, so often, the life that one does not lead',"I added as I turned toward the taxi, but he only blinked, that nervous, sly smile again twitching through his face.
"so long, my dear, mmmm, safe flight."
On the drive to the airport, Dad barely said a word. he rested his head against the taxi window, mournfully staring out at the passing streets--such an unusual pose for him, I covertly took the disposable camera out of my bag, and while the taxi driver muttered at people dashing across the intersection in front of us, I took his picture, the last photo on the roll.
They say when people didn't know you were taking their picture, they appeared as they really were in life. And yet Dad didn't know I was taking his picture and he appeared as he never was--quiet, forlorn, somehow lost (Visual Aid 18.0).
"As far as one journeys, as much as a man sees, from the turrets of the Taf Mahal to the Siberian wilds, he may eventually come to an unfortunate conclusion--usually while he's lying in bed, staring at the thatched ceiling of some substandard accommodation in Indocinea," writes Swithin in his last book, the posthumously published Whereabouts, 1917 (1918). "It is impossible to rid himself of the relentless, cloying fever commonly known as Home. After seventy-three years of anguish I have found a cure, however. You must go home again, grit your teeth and however arduous the exercise, determine, without embellishment, your exact coordinates at Home, your longitudes and latitudes. Only then, will you stop looking back and see the spectacular view in front of you."
--Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl
A mystery of two sorts . . . the discovery of adolescence and its dreaded relationships with our peers and the mystery of the adults that surround us. Both quandaries are puzzled out by the wonderful Blue Van Meer, one of the better adolescent female characters I've read in a good while.
