Heart exam

I’ve been re-reading The Seven Ages, Louise Glück’s ninth and “strangest” book, according to the copy on the bookflap (typically written by the author). The following lines (from “Eros”) struck me this morning:

I needed nothing more; I was utterly sated.
My heart had become small; it took very little to fill it.

This made me wince with recognition.

Then in the blogs I found some equally memorable phrases, as if continuations of the same thought. At Creek Running North I found this:

Out came the fortune cookies, invented, doncha know, not half a mile from where I sit here in my office. Mine read something like “If your desires are not extravagant, they will be granted.”

Very Chinese. And yet for a moment I read it as one of those wonderful old Paris Enrages slogans, thinking it read something like “If your desires are not granted, they were not extravagant enough.”

Then just now I click on Lekshe’s Mistake and find this:

Fading breaths say less than silence. A heart unlocked is not necessarily open.

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