WHEN YOU DO NOT HAVE A PROJECT IN LIFE, YOU AGE PREMATURELY AND DIE. .. VOCE E LINDA CAETANO VELOSO
I have always been fond of reading, the habit of looking through second hand bookstores and bouquinistes have followed me in my travels ..Powell's of Portland.. River Seine.. Tokyo.. Carlton in Melbourne. Books and Books in Miami while studying there and Mr Kaplan the owner Mitch Kaplan... wandering around like Maqroll
From the archive5 min read
Originally from the Before the Cure archive
I have always been fond of reading, the habit of looking through second hand bookstores and bouquinistes have followed me in my travels ..Powell’s of Portland.. River Seine.. Tokyo.. Carlton in Melbourne. Books and Books in Miami while studying there and Mr Kaplan the owner Mitch Kaplan… wandering around like Maqroll of Alvaro Mutis fame, Gabo and Cartagena ..Pablo Neruda. Sebastiana his home in Valparaiso, Isla Negra along the rugged coast of Chile, La Chascona in Santiago de Chile ..
Alberto Moravia of childhood .. so many so many good writers Pankaj Mishra and Amitav Ghosh..
But there are some who leave you spellbound, years after you have read them
for me
VS Naipaul
Haruki Murakami
Alvaro Mutis
Pablo Neruda
Certainly they enriched my life ..
Today in the mail I received a copy (i have owned them before but a pleasure to re read and then give them away) about the adventures of my alter ego Maqroll
Come the wind may never again blow
as it now blows for us .. how can I forget the dedication on a book by Pablo Neruda
Thank you, Dr J J T, now swallowed up by the fog in the forest of memories .
As I walked into the Premier Book Store at the end of the main drag in Bangalore where I had gone to spend hours looking through the crowded collection of Mr Shanbag, he pulled me aside and said .. you must read this book ….
From then on, I devoured everything written by Murakami Haruki in English translation.. truly enjoy reading him .. the excitement of a new Murakami book is incredible to the heart and the mind.
For those who has experienced the moveable feast of HAVANA, I recommend Leonardo Padura and I am trying to read all his books in English translation, even though i have some books in Spanish as well as French..
It was a chilly evening in Quiberon where I had gone to visit the La petite poete de Cote Sauvage and a friend at the table was thrilled to be reading Padura in French. I immediately texted my mother at the Cuban Ministry of Culture and she said: Hijo, the next time you come to visit me, I will introduce you to Padura..
So here I am , sitting sipping a Brancott Sauvignon Blanc from Aotearoa, certain songs began appearing in the canvas of the mind.. always associated with someone or other, this time, a friend who helped me get through the covid isolation through cyber companionship from Bauru in Brasil.
As the La Petite poete de cote sauvage said to me at a tender age of 4
How can I miss you , when you are always in my heart?
So dear dear friends, in Hanoi and Havana, SriRacha and Siem Reap, KL and Qatar, Cochin and Colombia, Mashhad and Miami, Tabriz and Marrakech..
If you want to have a continuous interesting life, always have a project to look forward to. When you do not have one, you wither and age beyond your years ..
