More "A Million Miles..."

I had tabbed and tagged so many thoughts (for their beautiful phrasing or the thoughts they provoked) while reading Miller's "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years." I feel like I should share a few more. So here goes:

He shares a poem by W. H. Auden which a friend read at a funeral for his beloved wife... I love these words:

"[She] was my North, my South, my East and West
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk my song:
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."


There is a passage on page 205 when he talks about interviewing Susan Isaacs (who wrote Angry Conversations with God) when he asks her whether she believes there is one true love for every person. Her answer is interesting. Miller paraphrases her response and says "She said he married a guy and he was just a guy. He wasn't going to make all of her problems go away, because he was just a guy. And that freed her to really love him as a guy, not as an ultimate problem solver. And because her husband believed she was just a girl, he was free to really love her, too. Neither needed the other to make everything okay. They were simply content to have good company through life's conflicts."


There is a story of Miller's journey to Machu Picchu. They stop at a small farming village along the way and there is a trail along the river that will get you to Machu Picchu in about six hours. However, the route they are taking is the Inca Trail... a journey of about 4 days and the route that must be taken on a pilgrimage. So, one of the people in the group asks... why would people take the longer route? and the guide answers "Because the emperor knew....the more painful the journey to Machu Picchu, the more the traveler would appreciate the city once he got there."


Finally, there is a passage where Miller is talking to his friend Marcos - a Portland art student. He had spent the year taking a photograph of himself every day and said that though the journey he learned that people are made to change and it is impossible to be stagnant. "People get stuck thinking they are one kind of person, but they aren't.... The human body recreates itself every six months. Nearly every cell of hair and skin and bone dies and another is directed to its former place. You are not who you were..."