ordinary

When Luke's friend Cameron came to stay earlier this week, she was so excited by almost everything she saw on the journey to our house. It was a dreich day and we drove along small country roads mostly past fields of cows and sheep, but for a girl who lives in Manhattan, none of this was ordinary. Pretty much like when I stepped out of the subway in Manhattan for the first time last year and was excited by the skyscrapers. But seeing your own  environment and your life through the eyes of a stranger can make you look at it in a new light. This ordinary life we thought we were living is, in fact, extraordinary and should never be taken for granted.

I've just finished reading a book called "Five Rivers met on a Wooded Plain" by Barney Norris. I picked it randomly secondhand because I liked the cover, but found it to be beautifully written, about five "ordinary" people whose lives collide at the scene of a car crash.

Here's the ending (not a spoiler!):

"I feel as I walk that there is a grace to cupping your hands and catching your life as it pours past you, holding  it close for just a few moments before it's gone forever and new water, new time, flows over, and loving your life as it passes. The world is ending all around us every moment we're living. Every bar in the score of ourselves is receding already into memory, into imagination, even as we play it out. We might as well listen."