i want to be a hero....

i just read a great little fun book called The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley (who planned to live an usual life) by Martine Murray. its all about this 13 year old girl growing up in a suburb in Australia. and i'm not kidding i adore this book! i want everyone girl and boy to read it and to know that it is ok to think the way Cedar does! she is so alive. she is so creative. she wants nothing more than to an acrobat and that's pretty much what the story is about. but anyway, the reason i loved the story so much was because of the true and simple beauty that is reflected in the way Cedar thinks and speaks. like in this moment, she is hugging her mom who she just had a very special moment with, "It was better to let the feelings just melt through, direct from one body to another, no translations, just a bit, bare sense of us, together." wow. what a beautiful description of a hug, don't you think?! i want to be exactly like this little girl hehehe. and in some ways i hope i already am. but along with being like her, she describes a character and that paragraph jumped off the page! it had me in tears. this is exactly the person i want to be!

"Marge Manoli is an old lady with a hairy mole on her cheek. She works in the Opportunity Shop on Smith Street. She called you 'love' and she talks to you as if she really likes you. I've heard her talking just like that to all the crazies and all the homeless people and drug addicts who go in there. She listens to them, even when what they're saying doesn't make sense. She doesn't get impatient with them for going on and on about the same thing. Marge Manoli is the mother of Smith Street. No one ever says thank you, no one ever pays her for it, and she doesn't expect anyone to, either. I bet there are millions of these kinds of people in the world- kind, caring people disguised as bus drivers or sandwich deliverers or mothers or plumbers."

or maybe even 15 year old blog writers? goodness i hope so. i hope i'll be able to help people someday and love people the way Marge does. the way my mother and father do.