“Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.”
“Need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it?”
"Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery."
I just finished Marilyne Robinson's Housekeeping. It left me feeling sad and wise and aching for the past. One of those books where you don't read for a week after because you want to keep the feelings you had when you were reading this one. To read another would taint it almost, or erase the piece of your heart that carried this one inside it.
p.s. Thanks for your interest in the Pen Pal Project. I have already written my Pen Pal and have matched up several more partners. If you are interested, feel free to email me still and I'll find someone for you.
A year and a half ago (roughly) I started a book club. They still meet every month, and it has become such a great group of girls. I've come to love each one of them and look forward so much to meeting them on my visits to Utah. It was a funny thing to do at the time, but I am so happy I put myself out there and made it happen. I have a similar strange request project now, but it's something I have wanted to do for awhile, and think it's time to make it happen.
I'm looking for a Pen Pal. Someone who wants to write letters - hand written back and forth, a few times a month. I'd prefer it to be someone I don't know in person, but if you are really interested and I know you, I'm willing to entertain the idea. I am looking for a kindred spirit - and I think if you know what that means you are perfect for the project.
I'd like to write letters about everything - our feelings, our daily lives, but also books we love, quotes we found, snippets of inspiration we have discovered. In this way I hope to be more aware of the beauty I see, and express myself in a new medium.
I realize this is a strange thing (and I guarantee my sisters will make fun of me) but I want to be able to write letters to someone who I don't see or talk to all the time as a form of exercise in life, and also friendship.
If you are interested, send me an email - mandy(.)madson(@)gmail(.)com, and comment below. And since I can't write to everyone, for anyone else who is interested, I'll set you up with another Pen Pal who wants to do the same.
Thanks for humoring me.
P.s. if you want to join the book club, it's not too late. Let me know and I'll hook you up with someone in the club.
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