“And then it struck Oleg that Shulubin was not delirious, that he’d recognized him and was reminding him of their last conversation before the operation. He had said, “Sometimes I feel quite distinctly that what is inside me is not all of me. There’s something else, sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of this universal spirit. Don’t you feel that?”
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward
I read the majority of this book last week as I lay on the blindingly hot sands of Oahu’s Waikiki beach.
I feel almost ill at ease admitting this fact. As if my enjoyment of the book should be muted, having loved it in a land so starkly foreign from the places birthed in its pages.
But like so many great works, all it did was awake a thirst.
A desire.
To feel.
To need, and be needed.
To kiss that sublime.
And be.
Rant and Roll 
Bloody brilliant post, Vanessa. Aloha and mahalo!
“how nice!” axually i’m envious (of course) — not only @ your recent short-term residence, but that you can and are influenced in the way you were by reading something like that.
it’s been quite a while, but i remember feeling less gravitational attraxion and feeling like whatever brain/mind i had was more receptive after reading Hesse’s “Glass Bead Game” — oh, more than 40 years ago!
Oh, how I would love to read all books from a beach in Oahu. Then again, I would probably end with awakening to blistered skin. Sun, without re-application of sunblock cream, is the enemy of fair people like me.