Reading

I bought Jan Zita Grover's North Enough: AIDS and Other Clear-Cuts a couple of years ago from the Daedalus catalog--this was back when I still had a decent book budget--and for some reason I just couldn't get into it at the time. Picked it up again this week and--well, I'm truly moved by this memoir. Partly it's my own memories of friends lost to AIDS; but more than this, it's Jan's use of scarred landscape as a figure of consolation. Here's an excerpt:

Eric had a story, and like most people, he told it and retold it until he finally understood it. I must have heard it a dozen times before that happened. It was always while we were in motion, as if the ground moving beneath us set up a goading, reminiscing rhythm that pulled the story out of him like a ribbon from his throat.