It Is A Bad Idea To Live

We Mark Some Days As Fair, Some As Foul, Because We Do Not See That The Character Of Every Day As Identical

But She Couldn't Dismiss Easily His Light Touch With Her. No Pushing Or Pressing, None Of That Herding And Corralling Bullshit, Unlike Any Of Her Old Boyfriends. And Maybe Who You Fell For And Who You Eventually Loved Wasn't Rational, No Matter How Hard You Tried To List Pros And Cons And Sum The Results. You Couldn't Think Your Way Through It, Not All The Way. Maybe Just The Scent Of Somebody Carried More Weight Than Everything Else Put Together.

When All Else Is Lost And Gone Forever, There Is Yearning. Only Desire Trumps Time.

Ask Her What She Craved, And She'd Get A Little Frantic About Things Like Books, The Woods, Music. Plants And The Seasons. Also Freedom.

While Writing Cold Mountain, I Held Maps Of Two Geographies, Two Worlds, In My Mind As I Wrote. One Was An Early Map Of North Carolina. Overlaying It, Though, Was An Imagined Map Of The Landscape Jack Travels In The Southern Appalachian Folktales. He's Much The Same Jack Who Climbs The Beanstalk, Vulnerable And Clever And Opportunistic.