Marks

I started reading Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety.  I say “started reading” because I am so captivated by the first chapter that I keep rereading it.  A bit foreboding, perhaps, and some might say dark, even, perhaps, morose, with lines like these (writing of a group of close friends): “What ever happened to the passion we all had to improve ourselves, live up to our potential, leave a mark on the world?….Leave a mark on the world.  Indeed, the world left marks on us.” 

There is that trade off, it seems.  The more one wants to “leave a mark on the world” the more one is exposed to being “marked up” by the world.  And perhaps that is why I am skittish about moving on to Chapter 2.