Carie B Was Here

I can prove I’m not afraid of failure: I try taking pics of the moon with my iPhone. Even the best ones do her glory little justice.

Alas, I can’t help myself. I love staring at the moon. And I want to freeze my moments with her. Why? 

Maybe it’s just to prove that I was there. 

I recently finished Britt Marie Was Here – one of Fredrik Backman’s books I missed when it was first released. This man single-handedly destroys me with his ability to build worlds, to know the human condition, to tell stories so paradoxically simple and complex. It’s embarrassing that I even call myself a writer after reading his words.

And yet, I keep writing. And taking subpar pics of the moon. It’s proof I was here. And proof that failure isn’t anything I fear.

A few moments. A human being, any human being at all, has so perishingly few chances to stay right there, to let go of time and fall into the moment. And to love someone without measure. Explode with passion…

All passion is childish. It’s banal and naive. It’s nothing we learn; it’s instinctive, and so it overwhelms us. Overturns us. It bears us away in a flood. All other emotions belong to the earth, but passion inhabits the universe.

That is the reason why passion is worth something, not for what it gives us but for what it demands that we risk. Our dignity. The puzzlement of others and their condescending, shaking heads.

Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here