..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

In My Life

By Jim Walsh

In my unending effort to get into the holiday spirit, I spent the last couple days listening to KOOL 108 and reading "Damage," the 1991 Josephine Hart novel that was later made into a film starring Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche. It's the story of a button-down Englishman who falls in obsessive love with his son's fiancée, who has never gotten over the suicide of her brother-slash-would-be lover. It all ends tragically, with one of the characters providing this summary to Hart's protagonist:

"Men and women find all sorts of ways to be together, all sorts of ways. Yours was high and dangerous. Most of us stay on the lower paths."

Not exactly "How The Grinch Stole Christmas," but I must say there was a more spiritual – if that's the right word – connection to imbibing in the internal chaos of fellow feeling human beings than to the external holiday cheer that demands we be merry and get out and shop, even though life has a way of bringing you to your knees every day, no matter what the calendar says.Hart:

"That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive. All damaged people are dangerous. Survival makes them so. They have no pity. They know that others can survive, as they did."

To read the rest go here:

http://www.minnpost.com/jimwalsh/2008/12/15/5261/on_damage_human_connection_and_those_robbed_of_time