“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.