It is interesting to be reading two books at the same time.

On one hand, I am reading Immortality by Milan Kundera in school. Partly of course, to appear intellectual, and partly because lessons are so mundane. I believe I failed in the first objective, when I stupidly asked B.C. what "milieu" means and got a most demeaning laugh in reply, followed by a suggestion that I go read "tintin" instead.

Anyway, the second is A Home At The End Of The World by Michael Cunningham, which I reserve for bedtime reading at home. (Have I mentioned how this really endearing fellow at borders recommended me the hours and expounded on how good it was? Okay nevermind there's not much to say anyway).

Ah yes, the first book, in its anecdote of Bettina and Goethe, attributes love to a grasp for immortality. That Bettina held a pistol at Goethe's immortality, and that Goethe dared not react lest anything he do be used as ammunition. The second explores the peculiar relationships of urban life, and shows how love continues to persist in its various forms.

Immortality immortality. This is the heartbeat of life, this is what courses through veins and pulses through arteries. It just kept pounding through my mind, you know. Even after yesterday when I finished chapter 2. Immortality, immortality. This is also something I came up with during a very-bored Frost lesson.

So which is it? Is love really just a concept to be subsumed under man's neverending quest to be immortal, to have his name spelled out in the stars and ingrained into the earth? Is love just the pursuit of something so elusively unattainable that when we finally do achieve it, the greatness of that love will send ripples throughout the world that will leave fascinated whispers echoing along corridors even long after our death? Or is love really the most basic striving of the human heart, and can be found everywhere, from the squalid squatters to the decadent penthouses, because it is simple and thus within every human's reach?

I don't know. I'd like to think maybe it's a mixture of both. That it is inherently available to everyone, and that we just need to find the right person. And then I find myself dreaming of how great love could be. How I want it to be so emotionally charged that we'd be inextricably bound together by it. How my professions for love will outdo any romantic fantasy the world has witnessed. How it will be everlasting, in that it will age, mellow, and become sweet as wine, to be truly savoured only after the grave. We would concoct ambrosia together, the everlasting nectar of the gods, and drink from it after our frail, flawed human bodies have expired.

Immortality, Immortality.