Waving our hands in space and time

So I have been reading a book about a book.  'The History of Love - a novel' about a book called 'The History of Love.'  I picked it up somewhere, somewhen, somewhile back...in a charity shop for 20p. Words are cheap, huh?

Anyhow, there's this chapter in the book (the enwrapping/bracketing book) called 'The Eternal Disappointment Of Life As It Is'.  And the chapter in the enwrapped/bracketed book is called 'Feelings are not as old as time.' And, see, the brackets are actually in the wrong place but what can one do, for meaning's sake?

'Just as there was a first instant when someone rubbed two sticks together to make a spark, there was a first time joy was felt, and a first time for sadness,' it says.  'For a while, new feelings were being invented all the time. Desire was born early, as was regret.' I bet.  
And then it goes on...'Even now, all possible feelings do  not yet exist.  There are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination.  from time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written, or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom, or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world.  And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges, and absorbs the impact.'
Tis a lovely thought but...I wonder...how we like to think we're different, don't we?

And there's a bit about lost words, and string, and shy people...

I'm not really sure why I'm even telling you about this book. But still... (The History of Love) also has a chapter called The Age of Silence, which discusses how the first language people had was one of gestures. 'Naturally there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one's lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realise I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking.'

Yet then again, we manage to screw things up perfectly well, even with words, don't we?  And it goes on. 'Your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body,  brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less.'  Yes.  I suspect they do.  Is there really a division?  Only in our minds.

But you have to love a book that has a once upon a time...because weren't we all kings and queens, or knights and princesses (or dragons) once.  And can you remember laughter?

Anyhow.  I liked this book.  Not in a gobble it all up way. Not in a let's be distracted from the realisation that we're minuscule specks of dust magneted to a larger speck of dust careering through the innards of what is probably just another marginally larger speck of dust and so on way.  Just in a ...yeah kind of way.

http://architectureofdoom.tumblr.com/image/56589484772

Anyhow.  There we go.  Waving our hands in space and time.