on a whim

sometimes the most unexpectedly meaningful are those that happen on a whim.

[death, love, births...life]

i often buy books on a whim.

[i also catch cheap flights, take road trips, skydive, fall in and out of love, and break into a dance on a whim]

sometimes based merely on the cover. or by chancing upon its title. or for no reason at all.

[though i often find reason in them eventually]

from my most recent purchase:

"when a good family member dies, there's a tenderness and a sorrow that can restore life to those who are left behind. but when someone dies who's half loved and half hated by his own family, whose children, for example, are always trying to get closer to that man or to that woman and don't quite succeed, then the aftereffect is OBSESSIVE. those are the ones who are hurt the most. i won't call them DYSFUNCTIONAL families, but it's into the less successful families that terrorism bites most deeply. because there is that TERRIBLE WOE that one can't speak to the dead parent or the dead son or daughter or dead mate; one can't set things right anymore. one was planning to, one was hoping to, and now it's LOST FOREVER. that makes it profoundly obsessive."

WHY ARE WE AT WAR? / norman mailer