More McCall Smith action
Just finished reading Alexander McCall Smith's The Right Attitude to Rain. I'm a follower of McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series simply because it feeds me with thought-provoking lines like these:
In the context of eternity, this is nothing, as are all our human affairs. In the context of eternity, our anxieties, our doubts, are little things, of no significance. Or, as Herrick put it, rosebuds were there to be gathered, because really, she thought, there was no proof of life beyond this one; and all that mattered, therefore, was that happiness and love should have their chance, their brief chance, in this life, before annihilation and nothingness to which we were all undoubtedly heading, even our sun, which was itself destined for collapse and extinction, signifying the end of the party for whosoever was left.
But she knew, even as she thought this, that we cannot lead our lives as if nothing really mattered. Our concerns might be small things, but they loomed large to us. The crushing underfoot of an ants' nest was nothing to us, but to the ants it was a cataclysmic disaster: the ruination of a city, the laying waste of a continent. There were worlds within worlds, and each will have within its confines values and meaning. It may not really matter to the world at large, thought Isabel, that I should feel happy rather than sad, but it matters to me, and the fact that it matters matters.
"I'm very fortunate," she said. "I'm well-off. I was left money. That's where it comes from. But I try not to splash it around, I assure you. I don't live in great splendour or anything like that."
"Pity," said Miranda. "I would, if I had money."
"You don't know that. You might find that it made no difference. And it doesn't, you know. Once one has the minimum required for reasonable comfort, any more makes no difference to how you feel. It really doesn't."
Isabel watched them return to the counter. For each of us, she thought, there is our completeness in another. Whether we find it, or it finds us, or it eludes all finding, is a matter of moral luck.
And BBC recently aired the 2-hour pilot episode of McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I've been searching for that title in National/Fully Booked/Powerbooks, but it's always out of stock
Anyway, I'm downloading the episode now to see how it goes. :)
Currently listening: Keane's Somewhere We Only Know
Currently feeling: thirsty