“ I feel like I could disappear because I'm not real to other people. ”
But life. It rushes by and then you think you'll see people... You think you'll do things and have time for this and time for that... And there is never time. This is what I have learned, Anna, I have learned that there is never as much time as you think there is. -(Ottmar)
~ Miranda Emmerson
How do you explain to a child who likes everyone in the world that adult life consists to a great extent of cutting people away?
She became fascinated by the statue of Edith Cavell and would stand at the base of it in the freezing cold of a December morning, looking up: -Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone-. Sometimes those words made her cry. The tears would come uncontrollably and they would not stop. And in those moments Anna found forgiveness and it made her free. But they were only moments. Forgiveness is a hard thing to hang on to.
My uncle read me Omar Khayyam. In Arabic. Not Turkish or even English. I tried so hard to understand it. I would ask him what it all meant but he always said the pleasure was in the finding out... the discovery. He said you can keep some poems by you your whole life and they will only reveal parts of themselves to you when you are ready to hear them. (Ottmar)