Read it, Read it, You Have To

There is no more room in our bookshelves so I haven't been purchasing books (but I'm rethinking this, one more can't hurt right?)  I wait, impatiently, for new titles from the New York Public Library. Specifically, Richard Ford's Canada, Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone, and Jeanette Winterson's Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?  I don't think I'll get them any time soon.  It's more likely, I'll be reading them 6 months from now.  There are a few others on hold but no word... (I feel as if I'm in a library blackhole.  Where are the books!?)

I'm currently reading a book that I've stopped and started five times.  It was clutched in every palm on the New York City subway two years ago. I'm drowning in it, wondering how on earth I'll ever get through.

I have an epic long to-read list and I just feel it's failing me, over and over. I have read so many books these past few weeks where I close the last page and think quick, on to the next one.  I just haven't fallen in love.  Sometimes I haven't even fallen in like.

I'm reading book blogs, book reviews, feeling meh, about everything.  Feeling that I can never quite understand how the reviewer truly feels.   Where are the books where there is no logic, no rhyme, no reason?  It's different than like.  It's different than, oh, yes, that was a good book.  It's even different than that was well written.  I'm talking about pure, inarticulate, head over heels in love books where you just scream Read it!  Read it!  YOU HAVE TO.

So I'm reaching out to all of you.  What's your Read It, Read It, You Have To recommendation?  What's your I will pay you to read this book book?

Since it's only fair I reciprocate, here's three off the top of my head, without thinking: Three Junes by Julia Glass, Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

So, what say you?  

Obanos, Spain

It was the round-abouts that sent us veering.  You couldn't drive the miles on all that newly paved gray without coming to the ease of a circle. To go straight required taking the bend of a half-moon and sometimes it felt that having to curve at all meant drifting away entirely.

So we followed sturdy signs to empty villages, parked on silent streets, watched backpackers jab the pavement with poking metal poles.  They travelled El Camino de Santiago, or the way, we later heard it called by the Canadians who rolled their eyes, believing that the trek had become too popular because of a film we'd never heard of.  I made a note to find the movie, to see it, to understand what was so compelling that people were desperate to take the ancient pilgrimage through a place we thought we'd simply stumbled upon.

Everything in Spain felt vaguely yellow and grey but Obanos was lemon, steeped in sun, hung out to dry against all the blue above.  It was a version of the Old West, hazy and vivid at the same time, with the smoke of dirt under our feet but, no, it wasn't dirt at all, just hot, smooth, yellow stone that looked like dirt that had been kicked up under hooves and there was the clip-clop sound of nothing or was it the swing of a saloon door but, of course not, because Obanos is stern masonry and brick and one medieval bell-tower that did not ring its fists at the sky.

We walked so as not to disturb.  Peeked around the painted angles of each home. Passed the lipstick red blossoms in thick clay pots.  Dared not follow the creep of technicolor vines.  There was just one home in rounded, Easter pink.  It's arched windows and painted shutters slipped down the slope, made way for lush, eager green.

In my mind we saw no one or we did but it was like looking through.  Like having to take a turn to go straight.  Like knowing you were somewhere that never saw you.

For more Spain posts, go here. 

First

Yesterday, we left our cubicles for an endless meeting.  On the status of our business.  On the future of our business.  What sits at its core.  I couldn't sit still.  My mind wandered. I looked out the glass windows at my city's skyline, a city gasping for air.  The heat here is extreme.  It's trapped between buildings.  It hovers over concrete.

Afterwards, we sat in a windowless room.  We were put in groups, told to come up with ideas.  We were given prompts and tasks, post-its and markers.  There were facilitators and easels scrawled with notes. I don't thrive in these situations. Being told to think leaves me empty.  In my opinion, this is not how good ideas are generated. But there was no choice.  Ideate or bust. (Or look out the window.  Oh. Wait.)

As a warm up to the idea vomit that would ensue, we were challenged to think of a child's 'firsts'.  The first day of school. The first time riding a bicycle.  These kinds of milestones.  Eventually, it became tedious. Isn't everything, in it's own way, a first?  First birthday party.  First movie.  First pancake even.  (I wondered, in all this ridiculousness, how dark we could take it: 'First time I was picked last in gym class' 'First time I realized Daddy didn't love with me'  but, no, this is not what anyone wanted to hear.)  And so our facilitator, our fearless hunter and gatherer of ideas!, asked us to think of our own firsts.  Not then.  But now.  What firsts do we still have yet to experience?

This is, perhaps, the only time I chimed in before retreating to my wallflower status: My first Safari! I shouted.

I don't know where that came from.

But out it went and I'm thinking, still, about firsts.  This, to me, is worth thinking over.  Not for five minutes.  Not to plaster on a giant notepad so we can say we've accomplished something rather than actually accomplish it (Look!  We wrote it down! We are masters of innovation!)  A concept to actually sit with.  The possibility of first.

In Touch

Last September I had posted about balance in our digital lives.  Lately, I have felt the pull of the digital universe and I think it's time to find ways to step aside.

Yesterday, my mother asked me if I was in touch with an old friend.  Well on Facebook, I replied.  What does that mean? My mother asked.  I did not know how to answer.  I am able to follow this person's life, to rattle off statistics.  I am not in touch.  

This afternoon, I hit a breaking point.  It had been maybe my 100th scroll through my Facebook news feed that day (or maybe...that hour.) Very little had changed from the last time I checked.  Perhaps another baby photo appeared for me to quickly smack a 'like' button.  

I didn't know what I was looking for, what kind of connection I was trying to make.

It is a death sentence, in the toy industry, to make what is called a 'watch-me' toy.  A toy that may be technologically advanced, that may cause oohs and ahhs but, in the end, does not allow for any sort of real interactivity, any real play.  I am starting to think that Facebook, for me, has become a bit of a 'watch-me' toy. 

So, I've decided to lay off Facebook for a while.  I'm not using it well and I'm not sure what I am gaining from the hours I clock there, scrolling through.  I love a lot of people. I email with them. I talk to them on the phone.  I meet them face to face.  These connections feel truer, deeper.  I gain a lot from them.  I think it is enough.  

Same Sun Here by Silas House & Neela Vaswani

Yesterday morning, I read Silas House and Neela Vaswani's Same Sun Here, a book about Meena, an Indian immigrant living New York City's Chinatown, and River, a coal-miner's son in Appalachia.

The story is told in alternating voices, through a series of letters.  It shares the vastly different experiences of these two unlikely friends who develop an intimate understanding of one another through their written correspondence.

The book is not subtle in its agenda.  It is clear House and Vaswani have something to say: about acceptance, about ignorance, about race relations, about the immigrant experience, and about our land, our resources, our environment.  Sometimes it's unfair to be subtle. Given the importance of these issues, perhaps it's not appropriate to be so tenuous.  

While I do realize this book is not written for an adult audience (but really, what does that mean? the book was written, does it matter who for?), I did wish for less of a beat-over-the-head message.  I believe, very strongly, in the intelligence and ability of young people to make connections and figure themes out for themselves.  Despite that, I found the book refreshing.  And really important. There are some beautiful images that struck me, that will stay with me for a long time.  A story of Meena's father and a bride who peels potatoes is one that comes to mind (you'll just have to read it to see.)  And I am a sucker for beautiful descriptions of my city, even those that come with a one-sentence-extra nudge:

"We could hear the sound of cars on the West Side Highway, but somehow it was so far away and mixed with the river's voice that the cars sounded like trees swaying in a forest.  I had not seen hills or sat on a big rock in many years.  The city, the skyline, looked blue and distant.  It made me feel like we are all very small and unimportant.  It is just when you are inside something that you forget that.  But when you are outside of it and looking from far away, you can see.  Kiku says that's called "perspective.""

Perspective is something we could all use.  I read a wrap-up in the New York Times about this year's college commencement speeches and, as Condoleeza Rice told the graduates of Southern Methodist University, "At those times when you're absolutely sure that you're right, talk with someone who disagrees.  And if you constantly find yourself in the company of those who say 'amen' to everything that you say, find other company." 

Same Sun Here is about the beauty of finding company in that 'other company'.

A Child, A Woman, A tree

I've mentioned before that I don't know anything real about photography. I only have a point and shoot camera. I don't know how to use a flash so I avoid it at all costs. And I have no idea how to edit a photo once it's been taken.  But I love, love to take photos because they help me see the world so I can imagine it better when I sit down to write.

Most of the time, when I see a photo I took, I don't like it. I think, it doesn't look the way it really looked.  I often find that dissatisfying. Very rarely do I think, this is exactly how it looked.

While in Spain, we discovered that I love to take pictures of three very distinct things:

1. Children
2. The elderly
3. Trees

So...I give you three photos that I think look the way they really looked. My medley.  A child. A woman. A tree.

It's 11pm. Do You Know Where Your Tomatoes Are?

I just felt like I needed to capture the strangeness of my life as it existed moments ago. Emergency gardening. Indoors. At 11pm.

The tomato plant tumbled off of the fire escape in a storm.  Our downstairs neighbor kindly brought it up. There I sat, sprawled out in skirt and shoes, still dressed for work (WHY was I still dressed for work?), with a bag of soil spilling on the living room floor, clutching a shovel, desperately tying my drooping tomato stalks to a sturdy branch, all the while crying: But they have to be okay!  They have to make it!  

And though there are six more plants, (six more, Tyler groans) I can not bear the thought of these not making it.

You guys.

I don't know.

They came to me flopped and flattened with their roots sticking out.  I tried my best but they are looking shaken, disturbed.