...nwood...

A perpetual struggle of the human condition is our craving for greater interpersonal connection. We constantly perceive that the connections we have are lacking, and that we cannot escape a fundamental isolation. While on the surface our desire may be for a partner - or for the ability of an existing mate to understand us on a deeper, more intimate level - it may be that the solutions we grasp for in the external world, can only be solved internally. Perhaps our true need is to re-integrate fragmented parts of our personality - or, as the character of Nakata puts it in Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore: to find the other half of our shadows.

On the advise of Erica Jong (The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry
Miller), I chose The Colossus of Maroussi as my latest Miller
odyssey. I was not disappointed. From page one I was swept away to
undulating hillsides pregnant with generations of ancient warriors,
heatwaves, floods, arks of the covenant, ear-chewing Greek
expatriates drunk on American materialism...and over and and over
again: light. Violent sunsets; Athens swimming in an "electric