doing many more things until it seemed that ritual had replaced grief. - V. S. Naipaul

She had a great many opinions, but taken together they did not add up to a point of view.

Always, sailing up from the south, from beyond the bend in the river, were clumps of water hyacinths, dark floating islands on the dark river, bobbing over the rapids. It was as if rain and river were tearing away bush from the heart of the continent and floating it down to the ocean, incalculable miles away. But the water hyacinth was the fruit of the river alone. The tall lilaccoloured flower had appeared only a few years before, and in the local language there was no word for it. The people still called it “the new thing” or “the new thing in the river,” and to them it was another enemy. Its rubbery vines and leaves formed thick tangles of vegetation that adhered to the river banks and clogged up waterways. It grew fast, faster than men could destroy it with the tools they had. The channels to the villages had to be constantly cleared. Night and day the water hyacinth floated up from the south, seeding itself as it travelled. I

Women make up half the world; and I thought I had reached the stage where there was nothing in a woman’s nakedness to surprise me. But I felt now as if I was experiencing anew, and seeing a woman for the first time.