A quotation from Philip Roth's The Human Stain (amazon):

'Everything stoical within me unclenches and the wish not to die, never to die, is almost too great to bear.'

It's spoken by the main character, Coleman, in reference to listening to swing music. I had to jot it down because I've known this feeling several times in my life, sometimes when listening to swing music, even, and have always searched for the right words to explain it.

It's the kind of quote Roth is good at, and it I always like it when these jump out at me from the pages of his fiction, a little jewel in what can sometimes be a rather tedious narrative.

Anyway, I thought I would list the Top 11 times I've felt this way (because why should there be only 10):

1. Lying on the front lawn of the hill on the W&L campus during cool spring days or evenings, either alone, or chatting with friends - if we had had a web cam when I was in school, you could have frequently spotted me there
   
2. Being with friends and family at our wedding reception, May 2000
   
3. Desbiens/Sugarbroad family dinner, New Year's Eve, 1998/99, where I first learned the 'Sambuca Sniff Dance' from Gilles
   
4. Walking with Catherine over Taft Bridge this past January, 2004 in freshly-fallen snow.
   
5. Sitting alone on the rocky beach north of San Francisco and watching the sun set during my solo trip out there in 1997
   
6. Camping in Moab, Utah
   
7. Being at the Grand Canyon's south rim in 1996 and looking out toward the north rim while a hail storm rolls in over the canyon. At that position, the storm appears to be at eye-level.
   
8. New Year's Eve, 2001/02
   
9. Dave Matthews Band show - Shoreline Ampitheater, Mountain View, CA, 1998
   
10. Eating poutine with Catherine on Christmas Eve, 1998 in the only 24 hour diner we could find that was open at 11 pm in the NDG neighborhood of Montreal. We had arrived later than expected in Montreal due to the weather and the rest of the family was already in Chicoutimi.
    
11. Upon the first reading of any of the following: Still Life with Woodpecker, A Prayer for Owen Meany, London Fields.

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