Co-Geeking

Every now and then you read snippets where an overused truism is poked and prodded in a way that nudges something loose.

“His features, his gestures, his long black braid: All these had become as familiar to me as if I had known them my entire life long, yet I had first encountered him only a few days ago. I did not understand it. Was this what kinship meant? A sense, deep in your bones, that the person next to you is part of you? Inextricable from what you are? That you could not be who you are without their existence as part of the architecture of your very self?

“We are none of us one thing alone and unchanging. We are not static, or at rest. Just as a city or a prince’s court or a lineage is many people in one, so is a person many people within one, always unfinished and always like a river’s current flowing onward ever changing toward the ocean that is greater than all things combined. You cannot step into the same river twice.”

– Catherine in Cold Magic by Kate Elliott

I remember being kinda stunned one time, years ago now, when talking to a coworker and she said she never re-reads books. I find that unfathomable, to be honest. It’s a bit like never eating the same food twice.

Strictly speaking, of course, the two examples are different, since repeatedly cooking the same dishes makes the kind of pragmatic sense that re-reading does not and cannot offer. But if you eat your favorite foods more than once, why wouldn’t you read your favorite books more than once? It’s so exhilarating to gain a deeper or a wider understanding of a work or phenomenon you think you thoroughly know already, because you have changed.

Elliott, Kate. Cold Magic. London: Orbit, 2010, p. 384-385.

Image by Eppu Jensen

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.