The time you spend standing in lines, or
driving to work, or
filling out forms, or
here, is part of your life. Maybe you weren’t thinking about that.
Time like this slips by, because it is not particularly remarkable, because there is nothing concrete to hang on to. “What did you do today?” Stuff, you know, errands.
What you’re losing is the little moments that make up your day.
- noticing that the car you parked next to is identical to yours,
- tying your shoe twice and still not getting it right,
- the way she looked at you in the elevator,
- the sky.
Little moments that aren’t story-worthy, you think, so you don't bother talking about them, or remembering them, and they slide past, leaving you. Put them together, and they make up a life.
This book is lots of little bits put together. Matchsticks aren’t that impressive until someone builds a model of the Eiffel Tower out of them. Piece by piece, Doug is building something big. Look at all the little pieces, and the final construction will leap out at you like a monster. Here I am, this is my life, taste it.
“I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments – we hear a word that sticks in our mind – or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly . . . and if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection – certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us.
We would realize that we have been having another life altogether, one we didn’t even know was going on inside us.
And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real – this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal.
So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.
I ramble. I am human; I am trapped inside of time.”
This is not a religious book. It doesn’t make any scary assumptions about what you believe or don’t believe. It isn’t about you at all. It is about a man who is one step removed from all the good things, and doesn’t realize it, and then does realize it, and sees that he might as well have been living on the moon. He wants to come back.
There’s so much more to it than that. It’s a good dream. Go find a copy. Read the back cover, then ignore it. Read through page 17 instead.
I have bought more copies of this book than I can remember. I hope you buy just one. I’d hate for you to miss it.