shantaram part 2

i think i'd like to travel in india.
i've never really thought that before reading this book. india is still something totally outside of my experiences and maybe i'd have to change...or find more patience or personal space tolerance or openness?...to really enjoy it or even to be able to appreciate it, but i'm fascinated. i know it's all romanticised bullshit, but then so am i a lot of the time... it's a bit over the top cuz i'm only a couple hundred pages into this book and maybe i even want to learn to speak hindi or marathi or something. the main character learns it and locals are amazed and entranced and overjoyed just to hear him say "my name is lin" in marathi...it's a bit heart-warming. maybe it's like hearing non-raptor journalists mention toronto or the raptors...or like the little smile and flutter of excitement i got when lin met a couple of canadian tourists in bombay and described the open friendly expression "he came to associate with all canadians"...
this book is just so beautifully written, and smart, and funny, and new to me...and something i figured out walking home from cherry bomb coffee shop this evening - for me, one of the best importantest things about books is having characters i can measure myself against...that's what so much of it is about...the act of measuring is even kind of unconscious, or not, and an act of admiration and striving for more or betterness or purity or truth...maybe holding onto the flaws that define me or strengthen me and reaching for what else there is to be made into me that i want to be...maybe to want to mean someting... characters can do all that and strive and try and dream and if someting didn't happen there wouldn't be a book i guess. but fiction doesn't detract from wanting and dreaming shouldn't just be frivolous or ever discarded... and we don't get the kind of tests that heroes get, where there's clarity in the results or confirmation of who we think we are, and whether or not we can be special...but the characters in books do and so we can measure against them and take what we can and fine tune and balance and add and subtract and in an equation of hopes and dreams find the variables to equal ourselves to ourselves in our own inner mirrors...?
...apparently i'm inspired. i'm so thankful for that. it's rare, but not too rare i guess. very precious at least. thank god i work in a bookstore i guess...

i think maybe i'll try to learn indian cooking next. and maybe the language that goes with it...

i got some good news today - aaron's (a guy i work with who kendra knows) sister has some other commitments and besides she's already seen bruce springsteen 3 times (!?) so he has an extra ticket to the solo acoustic show at the acc on july 14th that's sold out...so i get to go instead of her! i've never seen the boss, and i'm extra excited that it'll just be him doing a solo show.

hmmm...time to go walk sarah home from work.