garden of eden

In the heart of every man and every woman a kind of Garden of Eden endures, where there is no war, no death, where wild animals and deer live together in peace.

Irene Nemirovsky, speaking for the 1941 characters in her novel Suite Francaise.

Reading words of this novel is a poignant experience. The author reflects on human experience as France is being occupied by Germany in WWII. She is writing as events unfold, before the outcomes are known.

We know outcomes, even the outcome for the author. She completes two books of an intended five from within this dramatic time in world history, but in July of 1942 she is arrested, separated from her husband and two small daughters, deported to Auschwitz, moved a couple times, and dead by August 17, 1942.

enchantment

There were lots of reasons, I guessed, to raise a white flag and surrender interest in the material world. Aside from the well-trod pleasures of the quotidian--holidays at the beach, dance parties--you could still feel a greater need for something else entirely. You could feel a hunger and emptiness. You could be tormented by unanswered questions. Modern life leaves many people feeling insignificant and a bit lost. If you were living a spiritual life--and believed you were helping to end suffering--that could make you feel quite potent. And while secular life has a tendency to lose its shimmer--how many dance parties, or holidays at the beach?--spiritual life is infused with supernatural events. From a spiritual perspective, the world can always seem new and wondrous, the way it felt to us as children.

Martha Sherrill in The Buddha from Brooklyn: A Tale of Spiritual Seduction

going home

Perhaps its true that, as Thomas Wolfe wrote: "You can't go home again." Mostly because, as in Wolfe's case, after you write about the place you're from, people are waiting at the city gates with pitchforks and burning torches the next time you try to visit.

But another reason you can't go home again is that the shape you made upon leaving does not match your shape upon return...

Debra Marquart in The Horizontal World: Growing Up In the Middle of Nowhere: A Memoir