update

Have freelance deadlines on immediate horizon, thus…blog block.

Reference…

WHAT SHE SAID, WHAT SHE MEANT

JUST HOME FROM WORK:

What she said: I’m going to run upstairs and change before dinner.

What she meant: I’m going to read for a few minutes before we eat.

ON A SUNNY SATURDAY

What she said: It’s too nice to be indoors cleaning.

What she meant: I”m going to sit on the front porch and read.

IN THE LIVING ROOM, ON A WEEK NIGHT AROUND 9 PM

What she said: Mind if I turn a light on? It’s not good for your eyes to watch TV, even on a big screen, in a completely dark room

What she meant: I can’t read in this dark.

SAME NIGHT, ABOUT 5 MINUTES LATER:

What she said: Doesn’t the TV sound particularly loud this evening?

What she meant: I’m having difficulty working out what this poem means much less having to think straight while the TV is booming away.

IN LINE AT THE POST OFFICE 

 ”Number 84? 84? 84 is next! Going once…” (It’s the funny clerk with the blond ponytail.)

“Oh, right. That’s me!” She jams the magazine back into her purse and approaches the counter.

To the fair…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 books, $11 dollars, 30 minutes. 

those are the stats from my annual odyssey to the St Louis Book Fair. All proceeds to the Crisis Nursery. A total win-win event.

Time out…

Duck love amidst Chihuly…

10 Gifts for a Bookaholic (mom)

Although these are numbered, they are not in any particular order:

1) Movie-and-the-book combo packs. Give the book AND the DVD, like:

Chocolat by Joann Harris and Miramax; Heartburn, Norah Ephron; Room with a View, E.M. Forster and Miramax; Memoires of a Geisha (where the two are rather different)…you get the idea

2) Time (do a homemade coupon or something) for 2 hours ‘free’ with no phone, no errands, no anything but swing time on the front porch with her favorite book

3) Gift card to Barnes & Noble

4) A unique blank journal although the typical type will do fine, ’specially if inscribed somehow. Check here for some ideas: www.jennibick.com/

5) Starbucks gift card (or the like)…(no, no, gift cards are NOT cheesey)

6) A magazine subscription (you know her; you choose which one. You can’t go wrong. It’s also a gift that keeps on giving, at least for a year)

7) Books on tape, er, CD: examples - Novels are good but short stories, humor and non-fiction are great and interruptable, for short trips like work commutes. Poetry! don’t forget poetry. Everyone enjoys being read to and that’s what’s so nice about these CDs.

8 ) A bookshelf. Great or small.This is something that bookaholics are always always in dire need of.

9) A hammock. Even if you don’t have a backyard, these go nicely on decks and balconies. And in gardens.

10) Real flowers, in very cool Euro pots, accompanied by a book on gardening or fiction or poetry with the word “garden” or “flowers” in the title.  Or, paired with the DVDs of the Channel 9/BBC Rosemary and Thyme TV series.

Book Swap of sorts

Three amigos we were not so long ago, doing writing workshops together, inspiring one another, meeting regularly, talking, writing, doing the book thing. 

We met last night over a chain restaurant dish of food and glass of wine (risky business in a mall eaterie but the waitress SAID it was a decent pinot grigio). It was our first trio gathering in more than a year.

Conversation ranged from hair to aging to travels to assignments. I found myself listening, asking questions and doing a lot of listening. Having leaped from topic to topic, when the plates were plunked down in front of us,  Marge asked “What books did you guys bring to share?” (She had planted the idea in an email the day before our get-together.)

Hippy Sue had forgotten to bring hers, which was totally understandable given the car repair run-around she was having and the frenetic planning that it requires.

I brought one book along. Just one. Knowing I might not see it again. It’s one I like. But you have to realize that book borrowers, while excited to have something “else” to read, something borrowed, often forget to return the book; it sits on their shelf until they’ve seen it so often, they believe it’s theirs.

I had chosen carefully. This was in fact a book that Marge had given me. I handed it over hoping, betting actually, that she would enjoy it. I figure it will come back some day; her inscription to me in the beginning of the book may be the prompt that brings it home. If it doesn’t boomerang, that’s cool, too. Her Colorado cabin will be a good place to be shelved.

It’s a book on writing. I am as crazy about books on writing, GOOD ones, as I am for books about NYC. She gave it a cursory glance and popped it into her purse. Displaying serious ADD tendencies, our conversation hopped to the next topic. One minute we were on that book, the next, on Harry Potter and the next, travels in Europe.

For her part, Marge offered a Bill Bryson, two self-publish type books, one on communication, the other on successful women, and book on writing, Stewart’s FOLLOW THE STORY, one I already own and cherish. Hippy Sue took it with some urging. I took the self-publish on successful women. I am curious about what defines a successful woman. Other than herself.

It was a good evening. We renewed and will come back together in another six or 12 months.

A true book swap should be a sharing of books you deeply care about; there should be some excitement there. The hunt continues among those of us who are true bookaholics for the next “find,” the next tome to clutch and admire and finally open and read and travel to the “where” the book creates. I salute you, those who are willing to part with a treasure, not sure if it will come home again or not. The risk is worth it among worthy books. Read on. Pass it on.

Oh, I need a book group.

Hello, Niki

 Niki has her ‘Nanas’ at the Botanical Garden.

 

Walkabout

Sunday was supposed to be rainy and it was, later in the day. However the crystalline spring morning allowed for my walk. I trudged along for the first half of it wondering why I even bothered and wishing I had at least brought along my MP3 player or even a Moleskine and pen in my pocket. But, no. This was the business of walking.

Trudge, trudge, trudge. Maybe I should have driven to the park and then walked around there. A ludicrous idea: if one needs to walk (for all kinds of reason not the least of which is to get fresh air on one’s skin), then walk it is.

As I passed the house where the crazy dog lives, there was a bird singing so loudly, I was compelled to stop and look up, trying to spot him. I had no idea what bird could trill such a tune. Clever fellow - he was completely camouflaged. But he snapped me out of my trudge-trudge attitude.

I don’t even remember the hill, going up it, then down, then having to come back and doing it in the reverse sequence. Usually, it’s a bear.

Back home, whistling now (rarely done - like chewing gum in public, ladies don’t whistle, I was taught), I glanced at the clock. Still early. I opened the sliding doors to let in the fresh air and the neighborhood’s Sunday sounds. And I began the cleaning I’ve envisioned for weeks. Cupboard by cupboard, drawer by drawer. That kind of cleaning.

And then it began. The sneezing and wheezing. I grabbed Kleenex and kept going. By the time HM came downstairs for his coffee, my eyes had taken on the scary proportions of something out of a bad horror movie.

“Take something?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Nah.”

He closed the doors and turned on the a/c. Finally, my nose stopped jangling and the sneezing subsided. My eyes however, no. They were permanently puffed, I knew it, a look I’d have to adapt to.

I now regarded the outdoors as the enemy.  I stood looking out the window with the big dog. He wagged his tail, seeing a squirrel. I sighed. Lucky I got my walk in. 

Later, it rained. The sky stayed dark. We had to shop. I dug out my celebrity sunglasses.

“I’m ready,” I announced. HM smiled. “Doing the MaryKate and Ashley thing?” As we got in the car, I noticed the pollen, a thick yellow dust all over both cars and the driveway. When did that happen? How had I not noticed on my early morning walk?

I’ll walk tomorrow even if I have to wear a mask. OK, maybe not a mask but at least having popped a Claritin. I’ll bet that bird is still singing in the big tree at the crazy dog’s house.

Besides books…

Bookaholics do other things, besides reading.

Because many of us also write for a living, we attempt “presentation” or visual art, too, from time to time. (more on that, later).

The picture shows first attempts at making something potentially useful while also using some of my photos that I love but haven’t stashed in a photo album or box yet. (photocards)

Digital pictures are sly; they tend to remain on a CD or PC file. Others are desperate to get out, thus the following cut, paste, snip, arrange and embellishment ensued (and the dining room table is now a mess; yes, that makes two rooms I have commandeered but anyone else with two kids recently out of the house, on college or career paths, will understand the empty-room-must-be-used thing).

 

Poet in the passenger’s seat

The fact that Mary Norton’s New and Selected Poems, Volume 1, is in my car has nothing to do with the fact that it is poetry month. It wouldn’t matter if it were take-your-dog-to-work month. Still that volume of poetry would claim the passenger seat.

Mary Norton’s tome of reasonable length ‘works’ for me. HM bought it, inscribed it and put it under the tree for me four  years ago. Snarl was going out with his first girlfriend then, and she commented on the book, trilling how much she loved that poet! I didn’t touch the book for months following her ebullient comments.

It camped out on the bottom shelf of my nightstand for months, having been moved several times prior. A few weeks ago, I rescued it, clutching it to me, feeling its cool heat as I headed to the car and off to work.

And when I’m at the bank or pharmacy drive-in, or returning to the office from lunch hour, or if (and that’s a big IF since I gave up going through the ice cream drive-in) I’m just chilling in my car, windows down, nature buzzin’, the book “speaks” to me then.

Poetry lets you duck in and out. Norton writes about things I’ve seen or heard, things that were carved in myheart and mind long ago, things like a bear wakening in spring, things she knows how to call up, some of it by instinct.

Oh pishposh, you say, big deal.

But on a day that vibrates with the business of making money, to open a volume of poetry and turn nonchalantly to any page and read for one minute or two or three minutes takes the greed out of the air, returns it to its natural state, that being an atmosphere in which all of us live and exist and breathe deeply as delirious equal creatures. Poetry emblazons the mind, gives it hope.

It is simple stuff, rich, carved out of the air into words that are fat enough, image-ish enough for another’s soul to chew on and be thrilled.

Norton gets to ride shotgun for as long as the trade paperback holds up in the front seat and believe me, in the midst of a St Louis summer, the acres of parking lot will be a divine test.