I am reading a work of fiction entitled, “The Lazarus Project.” Truthfully, it got great reviews and the cover was cool, so I bought it. I have only just started, so I have no idea whether I recommend it or not.
The author, Aleksandar Hemon, has a beautiful command of language – that I do know. On the second page, he writes about a man visiting a street he has never been on before:
Someone peeks from behind a curtain of the house across the street, the face ashen against the dark space behind. It is a young woman: he smiles at her and she quickly draws the curtain. All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.
I have often sat and contemplated all the people I do not know. Sometimes, when I am in busy traffic, I watch the drivers fly by and marvel at the fact that they all have names and facts and circumstances and people that they love. I mean, how many people do you think are peeing at this very moment? All over the world, peeing right now?
There is something so bonding and so isolating about being a member of humankind, isn’t there? It is a mixture of knowing you belong because of shared experience, but also wondering how to avoid being lost in the sea of it all. So many people, so many names, so many feelings – generations upon generations.
Maybe some of it is answered by choosing to draw the curtain or simply smile back.
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