Adams conquers ignorance!

Well, I have officially finished Ignorance by Milan Kundera. In my opinion a more apt title would have been Nostalgia as that's basically what the story dealt with. It was the story of two Czech emigres who had a momentary meeting before emigrating. They meet 20 years later as they return after the fall of Communism. Kundera's description of nostalgia is interesting as when I think of nostalgia, I think of warm, fuzzy memories that make me feel good. The word nostalgia is formed by the Greek words nostos, for return and algos, for suffering. There was one passage that really sums up a lot of my personal discontent:

"I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more than he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals (an explanation that each of them would at least find acceptable), but also (and this is more painful to admit) because they don't hold the same importance for each other. When Irena saw Josef at the airport, she remembered every detail of their long-ago adventure; Josef remembered nothing. From the very first moment their encounter was based on an unjust and revolting inequality."

It absolutely tears me apart that at the end of the day, I'm so utterly forgettable. My ego simply cannot grasp the concept that I'm just not terribly important to people.

So on to the next selection, which will be King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard. When I saw this title I automatically thought of Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny Devito. Later I remembered that those movies were Jewel of the Nile and Romancing the Stone and Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone were in King Solomon's Mines which I don't remember as well.