it’s absolutely necessary. I’d say more: It’s vital.
People think that sleeping is something so personal that it needs to be solitary or else shared via sex, but that’s another area where the yellows win.
4. Separating
You should know that a yellow doesn’t need as much time as a friend; you don’t need to keep a yellow all your life. A yellow can be for a few hours, a few days, weeks, or years. All the time you need.
But you don’t have to cultivate your yellows; you don’t owe them anything, you don’t need to do things for them. They have an expiration date, and they should have one. You don’t even need to send a yellow an email or a text or give them a ring in order to keep something alive.
They were with you; they helped you at a particular moment or you helped them at a particular moment. Then they carried on with their journey and became yellows for other people.
Not feeling obliged to do anything is fundamental for the yellow world. Obligations, expectations: These ruin everything.
Are there yellows that last a whole lifetime? Of course there are. I have a yellow whom I’ve known since I was nineteen; we’ve spent fourteen yellow years together. He’s my oldest yellow and I think we’ve got a few years left.
Are there yellows that only last a few hours? Yes, there are those as well. They’re the ones you meet at the outpatients’ clinic in a hospital, in a café, in an airport, in the street, in a swimming pool. Yellows who last hours. While I was in the hospital I managed to do all of the four things I’ve just listed with a lot of the people there: I had lots of roommates I slept and woke up with, whom I hugged (when we needed it), whom I spoke to about everything (death, loss, movies), and whom I lost but didn’t feel sad about losing. Because what I learned from the yellows, what they said to me, continues somewhere inside me.
But lots of these people weren’t yellows. I think that while I was in the hospital I got to know only seven yellows. The rest were friends.
I know that you’re going to ask me how to tell the difference and, above all, how to find them. How do you go looking for them? How can you know who’s a yellow and who’s a friend? Well, like everything in this life, it depends a lot on each individual’s sensibilities, but in the next chapter I’ll givea few hints about how to answer these questions and many more.
Often, for me as a writer and for you as a reader as well, I suppose, we need a chapter to end. Sometimes it’s so that we can go to sleep (some of you will be in bed already); sometimes it’s so that we can leave the side of a pool, or a beach, or a hammock, or a chair, or a sofa. I hope and wish that this sofa, chair, or hammock is your favorite place to read.
Stephen King said you need to find the best place in your house to write a novel because you’ll want the reader to be in the best place in his house to read it. This is how total communication is created. I can assure you that I’m in my favorite chair, writing on a screen that I’ve chosen for this particular occasion, and feeling very happy to be telling you all of this.
Of course, I also need this chapter to end. Writers need to finish a chapter so that they can think, reflect on what they’ve just written, and have a break. Just as you are about to go to sleep, or to the pool or the beach, or to go and buy bread or to meet someone who could, with luck, turn out to be a yellow.
----
* Miguel Induráin (“Big Mig”): Spanish cyclist who won five consecutive Tours de France, 1991–95; Björn Borg: Swedish tennis player, winner of eleven Grand Slam singles titles between 1974 and 1981.
How Do You Find Yellows and How Do You Identify Them?
How indeed? This is one of the big questions. How do you know if someone is your yellow? How do you identify them, how do you know what they are?
There’s no single way; there are loads. I’m going to explain to you the theory that’s the
People think that sleeping is something so personal that it needs to be solitary or else shared via sex, but that’s another area where the yellows win.
4. Separating
You should know that a yellow doesn’t need as much time as a friend; you don’t need to keep a yellow all your life. A yellow can be for a few hours, a few days, weeks, or years. All the time you need.
But you don’t have to cultivate your yellows; you don’t owe them anything, you don’t need to do things for them. They have an expiration date, and they should have one. You don’t even need to send a yellow an email or a text or give them a ring in order to keep something alive.
They were with you; they helped you at a particular moment or you helped them at a particular moment. Then they carried on with their journey and became yellows for other people.
Not feeling obliged to do anything is fundamental for the yellow world. Obligations, expectations: These ruin everything.
Are there yellows that last a whole lifetime? Of course there are. I have a yellow whom I’ve known since I was nineteen; we’ve spent fourteen yellow years together. He’s my oldest yellow and I think we’ve got a few years left.
Are there yellows that only last a few hours? Yes, there are those as well. They’re the ones you meet at the outpatients’ clinic in a hospital, in a café, in an airport, in the street, in a swimming pool. Yellows who last hours. While I was in the hospital I managed to do all of the four things I’ve just listed with a lot of the people there: I had lots of roommates I slept and woke up with, whom I hugged (when we needed it), whom I spoke to about everything (death, loss, movies), and whom I lost but didn’t feel sad about losing. Because what I learned from the yellows, what they said to me, continues somewhere inside me.
But lots of these people weren’t yellows. I think that while I was in the hospital I got to know only seven yellows. The rest were friends.
I know that you’re going to ask me how to tell the difference and, above all, how to find them. How do you go looking for them? How can you know who’s a yellow and who’s a friend? Well, like everything in this life, it depends a lot on each individual’s sensibilities, but in the next chapter I’ll givea few hints about how to answer these questions and many more.
Often, for me as a writer and for you as a reader as well, I suppose, we need a chapter to end. Sometimes it’s so that we can go to sleep (some of you will be in bed already); sometimes it’s so that we can leave the side of a pool, or a beach, or a hammock, or a chair, or a sofa. I hope and wish that this sofa, chair, or hammock is your favorite place to read.
Stephen King said you need to find the best place in your house to write a novel because you’ll want the reader to be in the best place in his house to read it. This is how total communication is created. I can assure you that I’m in my favorite chair, writing on a screen that I’ve chosen for this particular occasion, and feeling very happy to be telling you all of this.
Of course, I also need this chapter to end. Writers need to finish a chapter so that they can think, reflect on what they’ve just written, and have a break. Just as you are about to go to sleep, or to the pool or the beach, or to go and buy bread or to meet someone who could, with luck, turn out to be a yellow.
----
* Miguel Induráin (“Big Mig”): Spanish cyclist who won five consecutive Tours de France, 1991–95; Björn Borg: Swedish tennis player, winner of eleven Grand Slam singles titles between 1974 and 1981.
How Do You Find Yellows and How Do You Identify Them?
How indeed? This is one of the big questions. How do you know if someone is your yellow? How do you identify them, how do you know what they are?
There’s no single way; there are loads. I’m going to explain to you the theory that’s the
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