The Crossing

"...We go from day to day, one day much like the next, and then on a certain day all unnanounced we come upon a man or we see this man who is perhaps already known to us and is a man like all men but who makes a certain guesture of himself that is like the piling of one's goods upon an alter and in this guesture we recognize that which is buried in our hearts and is never truly lost to us nor ever can by and it is this moment, you see. This same moment. It is this which we long for and are afraid to seek and which alone can save us."
-Cormac McCarthy

My sophmore High School teacher had absolutely no business assigning The Crossing to us for reading; it was so over our 15/16-year-old heads that it was ridiculous. I think if I tried reading this book again I would love it, but honestly, Mr. Boyd. Pick something that isn't so intensely existentialist next time; most teenagers can't even handle it, let alone appreciate it.

It's like trying to get middle-school kids to comprehend Virginia Woolf. I think at the time I was only partially able to understand Cormac McCarthy's brilliance; enough that I copied down quotes, at least. There were parts of it that, after getting over the teenage rebelliousness that comes with being forced to read four hundred pages of run-on sentences, I had to say, "shit, man, that was intense".

This post is kind of random, but I have the feeling that my computer's going to die soon, so I'm copying everything of importance onto storage disks. I came across this in my (surprise) quotes section. You'd be amazed at the stuff I have in here. I save everything.