Alright. Teary at the end. I closed the book on companions with whom I've never been with and most likely will never meet. Yet I could've been there with them, speaking of life, love, and literature in the context of a cultural cloister. Huddled together, fighting the forces, with imagination and spark.

Teary due to a final page and my return to only my life.

If I open to the beginning to read again, will the connection be recreated? Will I continue to share their life in an immediate sense that the reader agrees to upon the opening of the page and the soaking of the words? I appreciate that immersion, have willfully removed my clothes time and time again for the drop into other creeks (this autobiographical one: Iran).

Yes, I think I'll do it. Plus there's lots within the book that begs to be noted or quoted. I still have many more rabbit trails to skip down (naked in continuation of the metaphor? that's imaginative) in various sections. I still want to understand more. I still need acknowledgement of likeminded thinking people and how they flourish, or flounder.

The book is next to me -- the women in careless veils with hair showing. Thank you, Azar Nafisi, for writing your recollections ("Reading Lolita in Tehran") to bequeath companions, and thoughts on freedom and the 'reality' of art.

I've been enhanced!