The Wind Is Rising

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The Wind Is Rising

Excerpts From Notebooks 2003-2008


On the night of February 5, 2002, the author swam miles off the coast of Oaxaca, drank a half liter of rum, and prepared to die. A year and a half later he moved in with his ex-wife and began writing notebooks in which he confronted the consequences of his act. The Wind is Rising consists of excerpts from those notebooks.

Excerpts from the book:

It rises in me, the desire to leave and head, like Tolstoy, for the nearest railroad station, or, like Lermontov, to sneak off to Tamar, the foulest town in Russia. There I would meet, as he did, a beautiful enchantress and a blind boy.

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking
Robert Hass

My body lived a life of joy; my mind, of despair.

Old age is a good age. It allows us to let go of the things that drive us – love, sex, money, self-esteem – and live in the present.

I no longer have to concern myself with the truth; I can by virtue of age live between reality and illusion, in imagination.

Art is the resolution of the irresolvable.

I’m not senile. If I burn the house down it will be on purpose.
Margaret Atwood