In the segment I watch this last week called The Eternity Injection, Holmes was in a big black funk. He is a recovering addict with 2 years of AA meetings under his belt and now he realizes that this is his life...forever. Day after day, week after week he will be a recovering addict....no more, no less. I loved the line he used as he talked to Watson about his feelings:
Now I think if I were to use drugs again, it would, in fact, be an anticlimax. It would be a surrender to the drip, drip, drip of existence.It is a very depressing thought isn't it...the drip, drip, drip of existence? I think that we have all faced that feeling at one time or another. It is the mundane act of living after we have reached our goal and must now live without that tantalizingly need to conquer what stands in our way.
It has occurred to me that the very fact that we do live lives that are essential the same day after day makes it more and more important that we continue to find new challenges.
For example, the average person that leaves a job or sees a child grown or even gets that up level college degree faces a life empty of the challenge those things brought. If they don't love new challenges I can imagine that days and weeks must seem like eternities.
Can we change the way we approach life and make ourselves interested in learning or being creative or seeing every movie or even reading all the Nance Drew Mysteries? I don't know. But if we can, it would be a very good idea. Otherwise the "drip, drip, drip of existence" will take it's toll. We may not live forever but it will certainly feel that way.
by Stacy Schiff. Cleopatra was such an elusive subject that Schiff had to depend on history written several hundred years after she had died. No painted image of her remains nor does any of her words. And yet the author managed to capture a queen that could have been alive during the time of Christ, the richest and most powerful ruler of her time even though she is hidden from view.
by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This is no an ordinary book in anyway shape or form. Goodwin relates the story of the Roosevelt relationship in all it folds with such detail that I feel as though I am living through that period of time myself. I went to bed last night so angry because I had just read about how an anti-Semitic official in Washington during WWII made it all but impossible for the Jewish people to escape Europe and come to the USA. Isn't it interesting that we see the answers perfectly in hindsight. The discussion of social issues prompted by a book like this can be nothing but a good thing.
by Thomas Savage. I can't remember how I found this book but it is a jewel. As I remember it was written back in 1967 before the homosexuality was widely discussed. Even though it received rave reviews it did not sell at that time. It was re-released in 2001 and Annie Proulx wrote the Forward for the later edition. I was reminded of a Pulitzer Prize winning book by Allen Drury called 
. Released in 1959 I am sure it too caused quite an uproar.
by John Green. It was a delightfully written sad and telling book about how teenager's continue to live and love even though they are dying with terminal illness. Teen books have emerged as a very interesting genre of books I think. I remember hating the dummy down books we were fed and went directly to the grown-up section of any book store I was ever privileged to enter. Green told this story with such good taste and sympathy.
