pages i'll miss
September 21, 2002 08:59 PM

I just finished the latest Orson Scott Card novel.

It's.

I mean.

It's that feeling of being six. Or twelve. Or. The year you discovered L'Engle, Montgomery, Alexander, Lewis, Patterson. The first writer who. The first time the very act of putting it down left you weeping. When you learned to finish books in solitude rather than share or risk the embarassment of tears.

Some writers can just give you that back.

And with it. With it comes the sensation of every book you've lost. I feel a pig keeper, a piebald robot tiger, the face of the Goddess, green green brown, a psychohistorian, the Lady of Shalot. You feel something else, I suppose. Maybe a girl with red shoes? A lion god?

So light and so heavy at once.

The first Card I read was the last five pages of "Speaker". We were driving, I picked it up and was appalled that someone could leave the last five pages unread. Surely anything can wait for the last five pages? I read those aloud and then so many more. The best pages take on personalities. They become homes to which you can't wait to return.

I miss my friends.