"Depths"

I love reading because I love written words. The way they evoke and express, capture and create and spark thoughts and tell truths.

I just finished reading "Depths" by Henning Mankell. It isn't so much a mystery as it is a character study of a deeply disturbed man. The two reviews on the back of the book are more accurate than anything I can think of to say:
"A terse gripping dissection of a broken man whose private morality is as barren as the frozen wastes that betray his destiny." and
"An atmospheric and chilling portrait of a disturbed mind."

I began it. I didn't like it. I know people like this man exist and I used to be fascinated by reading about psychologically disturbed people, serial murderers, abusers and the abused...not the gory details but the why. What warps a human's mind, pushes it past its limitations, creates chaos of the mind and an inner landscape of emptiness and fear, damage and violation. What wounds the soul, kills its inherent beauty, and makes a staggering inner mess of a human being. I used to be entranced with my desire to find out.

Anyway, I finished this book and found it wasn't a waste. Henning Mankell is such a skilled writer that it is worth reading. In my opinion, for this paragraph alone, it was worth it:

"I could not endure it anymore.
I can describe what is really impossible to describe, things that even words try to escape from. Some things happen that even words are frightened of, That words do not want to be used for describing.
I have dreamt about words running for their lives..."

When I read that, I had to stop. I couldn't believe the absolute beauty of that paragraph. It made me catch my breath. It really touched me. I would never, in all my life, have envisioned on my own what that paragraph says.

But after reading it I thought of all the children hiding in closets or under beds, horribly abused and used by adults and parents the world over; the children who never play, never laugh, never get to be children really; the soul destroying business of pornography; the industry that makes it possible to buy a child for sexual purposes; the fact that most children in these industries die very young because their small bodies simply can't handle such abuse. I thought of abortion; war; starvation; torture; rape; suicide; the atrocities of history and of today...(the list is unending)

And I could cry for a world in which words must be used to describe such things. I can now visualize words running for their lives too.