from "HERE is Where We Meet" - John Berger

This book made me incredibly happy.  It sounds simple - silly simple - but there it is, and sometimes happiness is an accomplishment in and of itself.

And, of course, once attained happiness should always be spread around.  I did start writing down where he described laughs, originally, then slipped into recording more than that, which makes this a very incomplete moment of sharing, but hopefully you'll get something from it, nonetheless!

SO, here are some small tidbits, though you certainly have to read the work in its entirety (slowly and with intention, that sort of book), to get the full effect...

"It was a silver laugh, like a small jet of water i na decorated urn in the Alhambra." p 20

"A crystalline laugh, as if everyone is the cafe is clinking glasses."  p 40

(On writing...)  "You put something down and you don't immediately know what it is. It has always been like that, she says.  All you have to knwo is whether you're lying or whether you're telling trying to tell the truth, you can't afford to make a mistake about the distinction any longer."  p 42

"A cascading laugh like the sound of  a stream that has broken its banks." p 44

"She laughs again, an anticipatory laugh.  As if she sees the two of us approaching a big joke." p 44

"I remember her peeling and slicing cooked beetroots, hands holding the beet, the stubby knife, her stained fingers and the shiny purple crimson of the slices, the intensity of her insistence on the immediate and the day-to-day." p 45

"Everything begins sour, she said, then goes sweet and is afterwards bitter.  I'm talking about life, not details." p 50

"Let a few things be repaired.  A few is a lot.  One thing repaired changes a thousand others." p 51

"'Circumstances.' Anything can hid behind that word.  I believe in repairs, as I was telling you, and one other thing.

What would that be?

The inevitability of desire.  Desire cannot be stopped."  p 52

"A Nothing is an appeal for Something.  It can't be otherwise.  yet the appeal is all there is; there's only  a naked crying out appeal.  A yearning.  And so we come to the eternal conundrum of making something out of nothing." p 53

"Sense was only to be found in secrets." p 63

"In the open air the distinction between the kingdoms - mineral, vegetable, animal - seems blurred.  There are leaves curled up with dryness on the wooden planks of the bridge, which look like toads.  A hornet on a sunflower - there's a nest of hornets in the attic - could be mistaken for one of its seeds." p 183

"Why is sand seen through water so inviting?" p 184

"They shared a kind of insistence, the insistence of a goose in flight."  p 202

PS                                       ^  Jolly Pumpkin has a chocolate vegan dessert!  I forgot this was black and white film and snapped a picture, anyways.