“He loved her, but he wanted to shake her awake, or slap her out of her straight-backed music-stand poise, her North Oxford proprieties, and make her see how really simple it was: here was boundless sensual freedom, theirs for the taking, even blessed by the vicar—with my body I thee worship—a dirty, joyous, bare-limbed freedom, which rose in his imagination like a vast airy cathedral, ruined perhaps, roofless, fan-vaulted to the skies, where they would weightlessly drift upward in a powerful embrace and have each other, drown each other in waves of breathless, mindless ecstasy. It was so simple! Why weren’t they up there now, instead of sitting here, bottled up with all the things they did not know how to say or dared not do?
“And what stood in their way? Their personalities and pasts, their ignorance and fear, timidity, squeamishness, lack of entitlement or experience or easy manners, then the tail end of a religious prohibition, their Englishness and class, and history itself. Nothing much at all.”
—Ian Mc Ewan, On Chesil Beach
Posted by mesh at June 12, 2007 03:47 AM | TrackBackAaron,
I know this is out-of-place, but I never received a response to the message I tried to send you in July. Can you send me a "good" e-mail address?
Thanks
Posted by: Larry Mehne at September 5, 2007 04:14 PMhey mesh!
congrats on the red sox winning the world series! reminded me of the last time i actually watched the world series. it was a big party week at your apartment in st. elmo. and the red sox won then, too. hope you're well. take care, bethany