Net als echte Vancouvenaren konden we gratis lid worden van de bibliotheek, die met talloze verdiepingen een onwaarschijnlijk aanbod heeft. Ik lees momenteel een boek waarvan ik het zelf niet kan geloven dat ik het nog niet gelezen had (goeie zin, Fien!). En ik wil heel graag een passage met u delen.
Uit Travels with Charley waarin de weergaloze John Steinbeck zijn reis door Amerika beschrijft:
I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate. In Cuernavaca, Mexico, where I once lived, and where the climate is as near to perfect as is conceivable, I have found that when people leave there they usually go to Alaska. I'd like to see how long an Aroostook County man can stand Florida. The trouble is that with his savings moved and invested there, he can't very well go back. His dice are rolled and can't be picked up again. But I do wonder if a down-Easter, sitting on a nylon-and-aluminum chair out on a changelessly green lawn slapping mosquitoes in the evening of a Florida October - I do wonder if the stab of memory doesn't strike him high in the stomach just below the ribs where it hurts. And in the humid ever-summer I dare his picturing mind not to go back to the shout of color, to the clean rasp of frosty air, to the smell of pine wood burning and the caressing warmth of kitchens. For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?
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