Years ago I read Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. It was such a good read that I found myself slowing down instead of quickly turning pages. I'd re-read sentences and whole paragraphs because they were so very well crafted. After finishing the book I set it aside for about a week and then picked it up and read it all over again.
So I was delighted to find another book by the same author in one of Port's Little Free Libraries. This one was titled East of the Mountains. Again, a beautiful book and so well written. Maybe one of the things that caught my attention was the setting - the narrative takes place in the Columbia Basin of central Washington state, an area we've driven through on western explorations. I could picture it in my mind.
The main character is a surgeon. Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis he is determined to live independently and end his life on his own terms. I'd spoil the read if I said much more.....safe to say the story has twists and turns and unexpected consequences that all occur within about a week's time.
Reading the book got me to thinking about the human heart and all of the imagery associated with that interior pump we take for granted. We use it to describe so many things...."She was heartbroken"....."my heart just aches"....."he was a heartless bastard".... "she stole his heart."
The book seems to revolve around the heart and a theme of love....and more than half way through the novel the author writes: "Ben thought of the hearts of other men and women in all their naked, exposed truth - muscles about the size of fists, pulsing at the center of living forms. The heart that was for poets and priests the seat of all things beautiful, the house of love, the host for God, the chamber of sadness, rage, discord, envy, despair, glee. Ben knew the heart as a muscle first, designed for the work of pumping blood, not so terribly intricate that it couldn't be duplicated. Parts of it were replaceable....In knowing the heart in this cold way, he had lost all innocence about it. It was not that he didn't believe in love, but first he was a scientist, a physician, and a man of reason."
It's our brains that think about things like love, heartbreak, loss......but it's our hearts that seem to feel those emotions. Somehow saying,"I love you with all my brain" doesn't convey the same passion as "I love you with all my heart."
Anyway.....this blog entry is a ramble, but I recommend the book and the author.
It made me think. It made me feel.....it even made me remember lyrics from a song from the movie "Titanic"....."the heart will go on". It does....even after loss....those heartstrings stretch across time and distance and the heart does go on.
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