Nailing It

In a renewed effort to fit more reading into my days, which shouldn't be that difficult with two of the three teenagers/young adults not currently here (i.e., their rooms stay as is, no laundry is generated, and everything from grocery shopping to cooking to dishes is less. Less applies to the life in the house as well, but that's another post.). So I read a chapter, which is really a short story, in Olive Kitteridge this morning. Given time to curl up with a good book, I could immerse myself in Olive's world and see why Strout is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as 'big bursts' and 'little bursts.' Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.

To say so much in a short paragraph . . . true art.