I don't even know how to express this or say that I have just fallen in love with Umberto Eco. It's some late love blooming. He passed away last week. Rest in Peace, Signor Eco. It's some coincidence that I bought a book written by him yesterday and a newspaper's literary supplement had his literary genius covered in their Sunday issue. Everything just seems to be inter-connected. I have begun to have more faith and see more clearly, albeit with my glasses on, about connections of the mind and the meta physical. How else could I explain something as crazy as reading about Balzac and the little chinese seamstress the other day in a YA book and then seeing this Balzac book on a trip to a new book store in town?
Sometimes I long for too many familiar details like characters from books that seem to exist in real life or my very placid self succumbing to haywire imaginary plots and situations. Perhaps, this is all a wide array of chaos meant to contain within our human minds but which often spills on the realm of our existence. And I do seem to be trying to make it all work out, on my own which is comforting sometimes because it makes me feel super independent of everything- opinions, biases, tricky choices. As people we have just begun to smug over everyone else's version of things to be. While in a museum yesterday, I was reading the human history. All these ages and dynasties and numbers when humans began inventions- agriculture, the wheel, fire or just settling down. It dawned upon me that the 2000 year difference between developing from amoeba into basic forms of life is so slow compared to today's times. The world turns upside down in a flat 30 minutes, globally. While trying to delve deeper about humanity's birth and successive travels that led to humans settling into different parts of the world and then creating their own civilizations, it felt like a huge roller coaster ride. Who would've thought about oral traditions of poetry and verses and histories being passed after documenting them unto tablets, papyrus scrolls or the Gutenberg machine that is YES, humanity's single biggest boon if we stop competing against the best inventions from that era?!
Surely, Eco knew what he was writing. I am reading The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and nothing traps my mind but the vivid variety of his literary prowess. He speaks to me. I know he is talking to a reader who knows their literature. I could have seen Roman Holiday only once, but I can retrace Hepburn and Peck's vespa road rides or their wild running through the spanish steps. This is what Umberto is doing to me. He's running through my mind. He's opening all those channels that have temporarily been closed since a while. He's having a conversation with a person in my mind. I feel like a third party occupant that loves what is going inside the locked confines of their mind. It is true. I am a caged bird, inside my mind. The fluttering and flapping of this bird begins and soars highly only when someone like Umberto Eco makes an entry. I wish I could freeze these moments of unadulterated bliss within, It's hard to capture in words and more so to express in feelings. All I could do is cry me a river over this new found joy.
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