Dana C. 2010

I've been 4qating for a few years now, but this is the first time I've chosen to contribute to the site. I'm a lurker on the Kraken yahoo list, and I guess this is as good a way as any for me to say "happy 85th birthday, Russ" and "I'm out here, fellow Hobanites"! ;)

The quote I chose this year is one that resonates with me as one of those pieces that just catch in my eye as I read, and I find I have to go back and read it several times, to let the words melt into me and become part of me. I love the phrasing here; it is one of my absolute favourite passages in a Hoban book. It comes from The Medusa Frequency:

There's no end to me, no limit, no way to define or measure me, no way of knowing what I am or how much of me there is. There is an endless surging and undulating of me, and endless cycle of ebb and flow: that is called the sea. Little moments of me have lines drawn before and after and these moments are given names like Orpheus and Eurydice and they become stories. But I am wordless, heaving in the ocean night of me, stirring in the dark trees, breathing in and breathing out my soul.

It's just such a poetic stream of words. What a beautiful way of seeing oneself, and one's place in the world.

I'm going to take my yellow paper and tuck it into a journal at a bookstore later this evening, or slip it between the pages of a diary -- so that someday, when someone goes to populate the blank pages with words of their own, they might find Russ's, and a spark of inspiration might come to them.

As ever, thank you for your words, Russ, and all the inspiration you've given to me, personally, as a writer.

A very merry 85th birthday, and my sincere best wishes.

Cheers from Michigan, USA!

Dana C.