To quote a great man, “Shucks folks, I’m speechless”. Gary you shame us all. I don’t know how you do all of this. And this blood, from the fuckheads in the hall of hubris, to Fellini…we thank you. Oh and anytime you feel like sending any book recs 👍! One for you, A Gentleman in Moscow🙏
From Rules: It is a bit of a cliché to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time––by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still?
In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions––we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.
To quote a great man, “Shucks folks, I’m speechless”. Gary you shame us all. I don’t know how you do all of this. And this blood, from the fuckheads in the hall of hubris, to Fellini…we thank you. Oh and anytime you feel like sending any book recs 👍! One for you, A Gentleman in Moscow🙏
From Rules: It is a bit of a cliché to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time––by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still?
In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions––we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.
How true, Amor is quite good at observation. Wish that I could write 1/10 that well!
You and me both, brother!
Ha! That's how I talk! Love Amor Towles...read both Gentleman and Rules of Civility, which you have to read.
Will do. Going to KC in a couple weeks and will buy it