thank you for the book

Mario,

I had the most unique of nights passing between yesterday evening and the entirety of this morning.  I sat in the company of friendly hosts drinking out of bottles sitting on rocks by water that had all of its clarity and saw a flying fish glide in the open air for the first time.  I boarded a bus and watched the sighing lavender fill the sky from pink and orange stripes behind the clouds that echoed three-fold the shape of the mountains.  Until it was out of sight.  And I dove into my book with shaking hands by the dim light of the large van.  I looked up and thought, “is it this easy for me to traverse the world?  that I may pack a bag of nuts and next time a bottle of water, be able to pronounce my destination and then travel in the company of foreigners with whom I cannot converse and trust the journey so plainly that I may be absorbed out of it into these pages?”  And within twenty hours I had traveled with three cargos of Turkish people, sat and slept in a row with the only queers on the plane, slumbered on my bags in the airport, sipped tea in the train station, ordered two rounds of pain de chocolat with earl grey at the small cafe, reacquainted myself with this kitchen filled with morning sun, stolen away to my bedroom, and read the entirety of Disgrace.  Thank you for it.

Tim