Meher's… Diary of desires

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

-W.H. Auden

The second book I read was the five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom. It is about an 83 year old amusement park worker, Eddie, who dies and goes to heaven. Here are some excerpts:

**”There are five people you meet in heaven,” the Blue Man suddenly said. “Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.” Eddie looked confused. “People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless. This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.”

**When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished.

**That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate a breeze from the wind.

**”Sacrifice,” the captain said. “You made one. I made one. We all make them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost. You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.”

**Love, like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.

**”Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end,” she said. “Love doesn’t.”

I felt very sad for two weeks. In those two weeks, I read three books cover to cover. The first was Caspian Rain by Gina B. Nahai. Here are some excerpts from the book:

When Bahar, the main character’s mother is getting engaged to Omid, whose parents do not approve of her because of her poor social standing:

**Bahar, though, chooses to ignore the calamity that is being played out. She comes up to Omid […] Come inside. I will give you my best intentions and all my hope.

**He sees the devastation that his words have brought to Bahar and is surprised to find that he’s moved by this. He wants to tell her it’s going to be all right, things will work out one way or another, but he knows this would be a lie, she’s in for a rude awakening.

**It’s a fact, everyone knows it: happiness is transient; tragedy is what this world was founded on – how else to explain all the horror, all the war and famines and betrayal and backstabbing you read about in the Torah and the Koran?

**Lately, she has begun to wonder what it’s like to be loved more than desired – to be wanted enough to keep.

**He tells Bahar that he knows all about desire and disappointment. He knows what it is to want something, to want it so bad that you refuse to give up, even in the face of overwhelming odds. He knows about dreams and the price of chasing  them.

**Like the pauper who buys a fish with the last of her money, takes it home, and in its stomach, finds the most precious pearl in the world; like the beggar’s daughter who is sold for a song at the slave market, taken to the king because she is so beautiful, and made queen; like all the men and women in the fairy tales she had heard as a child and which she had so doggedly believed in, my mother knew she could be more. So she lived in a state of perpetual loss – the runner who gives her all to the race and always comes short. She couldn’t give up the fight and couldn’t quite win and so she was caught between the pride of battle and the shame of defeat. And in that state, in that place where rest was impossible and wanting led only to more sorrow, she bore me expecting that I, at least, would not fail.

**There are things we allow ourselves and boundaries we don’t cross. There are transgressions for which one will not be forgiven, crimes that indict not only the perpetrator but also those related to him by blood. You can be unfaithful to your wife, but you can’t divorce her. You can take away her dreams, but you can’t stop providing for her. You can despise, but not disobey, your father, dislike, but not dishonor him. You can pretend your child is not ill, but you can’t abandon her. For every sin, a virtue; every cruelty, a measure or mercy.

There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west –
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I heard this song on youtube yesterday & liked it.

Rough translation by me:

I live for you

So what if you are not near?

Your scent always lives in my breath every moment

I don’t know where my destination will be

if I continue to walk like this

What is this magic, this journey of ecstasy?

Your feeling will never die

This world will never understand

My happiness is because of you

Those who call it craziness do not know what rapture is

How incomplete I was without you!

I found peace when I met you

Now that we have united, o beloved!

What cruelty can the world inflict?