If You Stop Thinking, If You Stop

In The First Few Pages, Kundera Discusses Several Abstract Historical Figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's Sake, I Wanted Him To Get To The Plot, To Introduce Actual "living" Characters - I Recalled This Was A Love Story - And To Leave The World Of Ideas Behind. Here We Were, Two People Lying In Bed, Eunice's Worried Head Propped On My Collarbone, And I Wanted Us To Feel Something In Common. I Wanted This Complex Language, This Surge Of Intellect, To Be Processed Into Love. Isn't That How They Used To Do It A Century Ago, People Reading Poetry To One Another?

Summer Is A Latvian Chicken. We Make Foolish Choices. We Think We’re Young Again. We Run With Outstretched Arms Toward An Object Of Love And It Pecks Us And Pecks Us Until We’re Standing There Snot-nosed And Teary In The Middle Of Astor Place And The Sun Sets Fire To Our Penguin Shirts And All That Is Left To Do Is Go To Our Air-conditioned Homes And Ponder The Cruelty Of Our Finest Season.

I Reveled In The Smallness, The Coziness Of An Upstairs Bedroom In A Traditional American Cape Cod House The Half-floor That Forces You To Duck, To Feel Small And Naive Again, Ready For Anything, Dying For Love, Your Body A Chimney Filled With Odd, Black Smoke. These Square, Squat, Awkward Rooms Are Like A Fifty-square-foot Paean To Teenage-hood, To Ripeness, To The First And Last Taste Of Youth.

I Wish I Were Stronger And More Secure In Myself So That I Could Really Spend My Life With A Guy Like Lenny. Because He Has A Different Kind Of Strength Than Joshie. He Has The Strength Of His Sweet Tuna Arms. He Has The Strength Of Putting His Nose In My Hair And Calling It Home. He Has The Strength To Cry When I Go Down On Him. Who Is Lenny? Who Does That? Who Will Ever Open Up To Me Like That Again? No One. Because It's Too Dangerous. Lenny Is A Dangerous Man. Joshie Is More Powerful, But Lenny Is Much More Dangerous.

We Know Summer Is The Height Of Of Being Alive. We Don't Believe In God Or The Prospect Of An Afterlife Mostly, So We Know That We're Only Given Eighty Summers Or So Per Lifetime, And Each One Has To Be Better Then The Last, Has To Encompass A Trip To That Arts Center Up At Bard, A Seemingly Mellow Game Of Badminton Over At Some Yahoo's Vermont Cottage, And A Cool, Wet, Slightly Dangerous Kayak Trip Down An Unforgiving River. Otherwise, How Would You Know That You Have Lived Your Summertime Best? What Is You Missed Out On Some Morsel Of Shaded Nirvana?