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When my son Lucian was two years old, he threw his grandmother’s gold earrings out the window. He had been told to take a nap and reluctant to do so, he took action. Appropriate reprimands were made, but as many parents might have been, I was curious. Was this some little experiment in gravity? Were they treasures that he hoped to retrieve later and keep for himself? Or did he fling them out the window because he hated them? Did I have a thief on my hands? The gesture was decisive, but what was his plan? He remembers none of this, of course. If a plan had been in place, it has long since vanished.
-p. 45 "The idea of privacy is intrinsic to the jardin secret. Possession, ownership and intimacy may all come into it, and it may be erotic, but not necessarily. Implicit in the jardin secret is that small personal histories need not be shared; that human experience and imagination are sometimes a matter of private intentions, actions, or rewards; and that social exchange and shared experience may also depend on having this deep well of privacy."
On Goodreads this book seems to have elicited a somewhat ambivalent response in a number of readers, a common criticism being that it was boring or tedious.
I did not find it so. It was for me, a read that required a number of pauses for contemplation, but I found it thoroughly enjoyable. I especially enjoyed Chapter Six, At the Identity Spa. I took some time to investigate a number of the artistic works that Busch references and found that process enjoyable as well.