the lost man chronicles
the daily chronicle


a current runs through

An uncanny thing happened to me this morning. And for a minim of a moment, it kind of freaked me out.

My father calls me (from California) and he asks, “Son, do you got a minute?” Surprised by his somewhat serious tone, I hesitated answering affirmatively. “Sure, Pops, ¿Qué pasa?

He proceeded to say, “I want to read you something that you wrote to me. I was looking for something to read so I picked up one of the copies of Don Quixote you gave me and found the following note you wrote stuck between the pages.” He then went on to read the very same quote I shared with someone as part of a sincere outpour of spiritual predilection for each other, just a few days earlier.

It was one of my favorite inspirational passages from Cyrano de Bergerac, a play, made into a movie many times over, by Edmond Rostand. The excerpt is a dialogue between Cyrano and one of his foremost rivals, General DeGuiche. It goes as follows:

"Have you read Don Quixote?"

"I have—and found myself the hero."

"Be so good as to read once more the chapter of the windmills."

"Chapter thirteen."

"Windmills, remember, if you fight with them may swing round their huge arms and cast you down into the mire."

"...Or up—among the stars."

It was eerie I tell you. Even though, I’d given him two volumes of DQ, one an English paperback and the other an exquisitely illustrated rare edition in Spanish, I had to ask him, “Why are you reading this to me?” I explained that I had shared this very same passage with someone the week before, and it was too coincidental that of all the things he could read, it would be this.

He paid no heed to this weird connection and went on to tell me that he was writing something and was either inspired by DQ or moved to refer to it in the process of his composition. He read the passage he was working on and I was somewhat taken aback by its fluid rhetoric and the wisdom conveyed therein. He said he was working on it and promised to send it to me once he had finished.

Even though both my parents never really outwardly encouraged my aspirations as a writer (although both fully supported and sponsored my educational ambitions) I have to say that both have relayed to me their secret pinings to one day be writers themselves. My mother yearns to write children’s books and my father just seems to want to excogotate, contemplate and muse on life in general.

So, it seems that albeit there was never any outward encouragement of the kind, underlying my own passion I must have their own dreams motivating me.




in the beginning .00 the beginning return to thelostman.com daily archives daily archives


legal l.m