It happens every year around this time. I see the ends of the leaves on the trees curling gently toward themselves as they prepare for their descent to the ground beneath them. It is fall. I hear reports from home of cool mornings tinged with the air of pending December. The longer you walk on the trails, the greater the reward, as the blazing leaves make their descent down the mountainside. I can smell the air, hear it as it moves purposefully through the Aspens, their long white trunks crowned with a million leaves of gold.
Yes, I am restless. At 9:30 p.m. I could feel my soul jumping out of its skin so I took it out for a spin. A storm may be coming because the air here is restless, too, and the wind is pushing along the brown leaves already fallen. I'm back and again in front of this computer, but walking frantically for an hour wasn't enough to clear my head. I thought about grand, esoteric blog titles like "Hope vs. Reality: Whose reality is real?" blahblahblah. Who am I kidding? I don't know the answer to any of that. See, I went to a very disheartening dance call on Friday (well, the dance call was amazing. The choreographer is incredibly talented and his combinations outstanding), but I was the disheartening part. My reality right now is not matching my ambitions. Within those ambitions is a whole microcosm of other people's expectations, i.e. directors, music directors, choreographers, producers, etc. The business of pretend is indeed a harsh reality. Through it all I feel a real sense of disconnection and powerlessness.
I read this today in The Essential Crazy Wisdom by Wes "Scoop" Nisker: "Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky (Ojibway saying).
What I want and what are real are two very different things right now. In all honesty, what I really want to do, what always, without exception brings me great joy, is to drive around with the windows down, my head hanging out like a dog on some vast highway in the west, nothing but asphalt in my rearview and truck stop coffee in the cup holder as I drive from one trailhead to the next. Is there a job for that?
"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. " ~Kahlil Gibran.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Friday, September 03, 2010
Life in Books
I recently moved, back to where I started from actually, back into the warm and loving embrace of the home created by Tom and Shane, the sweetest, kindest, smartest, goofiest men you could ever hope to meet. While packing, I realized that the majority of my belongings are books. As my friend and I were hauling them down the 5th floor walk-up to load into his truck, I noted my straining biceps and thought to myself, "Hiatt, buy a Kindle."
Last night, I spent a good portion of my evening organizing these aforementioned books onto a bookshelf that has become decidedly too small. When I lived here previously, about a year and a half ago, I had many books but couldn't fill the shelves. I still had plenty of room for knickknack-y things to fill the empty spaces. Not so now. I put this squarely on the shoulders of my book club, the most well-read group of smart, opinionated, and beautiful women you'll ever hope to meet. We read two books a month and meet faithfully every four to six weeks. Hence, the burgeoning of my book collection and my wild vacillations about a kindle.
At first, I threw them haphazardly onto the shelves and busied myself with organizing the closet (another conquest, but that's for a blog that actually cares about closet organization). When I returned to organize the shelves, I found that the task became more of a sudden remembrance of lives forgotten. I picked up my extremely dog-eared, taped together copy of Tom Robbins' Another Roadside Attraction, recommended to me by a good friend from high school that I really looked up to. When she recommended the book (her mother, who was the only actual "hippie" I had ever met, had recommended the book to Ms.B., my friend. I was fascinated with 60's counter-culture at the time and this book is emblamatic of sex, drugs, and wild imaginings, for which Tom Robbins is deliciously and dangerously eloquent) I took myself promptly to The Bookshelf, a used bookstore on Washington Boulevard in Ogden and bought a copy. I took it to work, a golf course in North Ogden called The White Barn where I worked in the concession stand. It was never terribly busy, so between selling beer by the can and cooking hot dogs, I would sit at the counter and read. I discovered quite quickly that Tom Robbins spoke in an ambrosial tongue, so I went back to the Bookshelf and bought a used dictionary. I then took that dictionary to work and looked up every single word I didn't know and put it to paper, writing all the words and their definitions painstakingly down in a way that only my 11th grade AP English teacher Mrs. Roper would have loved.
My eyes were opened. I learned from that book that "you can eat a sandwich while drowning." I learned from Still Life With Woodpecker that before the encroachment of humanities needs to have lights blazing at all hours, women menstruated on the behest of the moon. For my 17th birthday I was in Jackson Hole with my family, and when my mom asked what I wanted for my birthday I dragged her into the nearest bookstore and asked her to buy for me his just released (at the time) compendium, Skinny Legs and All in hardback. It sits on my shelf next to Another Roadside Attraction, Still Life with Woodpecker (my favorite Tom Robbins, because the heroine of that novel, Leigh Cheri has red hair, "as red and straight as ironed ketchup") and every other Tom Robbins book with the exception of his children's book B is for Beer (it has a beer fairy and is written in the whimsy that only Robbins can master). I thought again of my high school friend Ms. B and all the naughty, sexy secrets I had learned from Mr. Robbins because she said to me, "read this book." Ms. B, by the way, drove a Volkwagen Beetle in high school as did I. Hers was red and named Bonanza Jellybean (one of the main characters from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues). Mine was blue and named Ringo.
I know, I wax nostalgic, but that is precisely the point: When I see books by Tom Robbins, when I hold that small, softened-by-the-years copy of Another Roadside Attraction, I think of Ms.B, think of high school and how I broke my middle finger in the door of my VW bug, think of homecoming parades and letter sweaters; I smell autumn and feel a little chubby, freckled, and awkward again. But I would open the books he wrote and read about men with limps and horribly crooked teeth, women with wild hair, huge thumbs, and the most vibrant names (Marx Marvelous, John Paul Ziller, Bernard Mickey Wrangle, Ellen Cherry Charles, Boomer Petway, to name a few). I didn't feel quite as bizarrely unique as the brightness of my hair and Pollock-like spatterings of freckles led me to feel.
I also came upon a few books that I would rather forget, but I would not get rid of them, unpleasant memories of giver aside. I love books. They tell me their secrets, fill my senses with the emanations of wood, forested dirt, wind moving through trees, and grittiness on the fingertips as you turn the page slowly so as to not even permit a sigh between words. Books teach me their words and show me their hidden places and people; from philosophizing about the pyramid on a pack of Camels, to the Castles of Winterfell, to Gary Snyder as he walks up the mountainside, to Edward Abbey rolling cigarettes as he works as a fire outlook, to Scarlett O'Hara proclaiming "Tomorrow is another day."
"Does the moon have a purpose? Are redheads supernatural? Who knows how to make love stay? I am going to submit these question to the Remington SL3. Like a war between magicians, it can last a long time, and even then the outcome may not be what it appears to be." From Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins.
So, I guess no kindle.
Last night, I spent a good portion of my evening organizing these aforementioned books onto a bookshelf that has become decidedly too small. When I lived here previously, about a year and a half ago, I had many books but couldn't fill the shelves. I still had plenty of room for knickknack-y things to fill the empty spaces. Not so now. I put this squarely on the shoulders of my book club, the most well-read group of smart, opinionated, and beautiful women you'll ever hope to meet. We read two books a month and meet faithfully every four to six weeks. Hence, the burgeoning of my book collection and my wild vacillations about a kindle.
At first, I threw them haphazardly onto the shelves and busied myself with organizing the closet (another conquest, but that's for a blog that actually cares about closet organization). When I returned to organize the shelves, I found that the task became more of a sudden remembrance of lives forgotten. I picked up my extremely dog-eared, taped together copy of Tom Robbins' Another Roadside Attraction, recommended to me by a good friend from high school that I really looked up to. When she recommended the book (her mother, who was the only actual "hippie" I had ever met, had recommended the book to Ms.B., my friend. I was fascinated with 60's counter-culture at the time and this book is emblamatic of sex, drugs, and wild imaginings, for which Tom Robbins is deliciously and dangerously eloquent) I took myself promptly to The Bookshelf, a used bookstore on Washington Boulevard in Ogden and bought a copy. I took it to work, a golf course in North Ogden called The White Barn where I worked in the concession stand. It was never terribly busy, so between selling beer by the can and cooking hot dogs, I would sit at the counter and read. I discovered quite quickly that Tom Robbins spoke in an ambrosial tongue, so I went back to the Bookshelf and bought a used dictionary. I then took that dictionary to work and looked up every single word I didn't know and put it to paper, writing all the words and their definitions painstakingly down in a way that only my 11th grade AP English teacher Mrs. Roper would have loved.
My eyes were opened. I learned from that book that "you can eat a sandwich while drowning." I learned from Still Life With Woodpecker that before the encroachment of humanities needs to have lights blazing at all hours, women menstruated on the behest of the moon. For my 17th birthday I was in Jackson Hole with my family, and when my mom asked what I wanted for my birthday I dragged her into the nearest bookstore and asked her to buy for me his just released (at the time) compendium, Skinny Legs and All in hardback. It sits on my shelf next to Another Roadside Attraction, Still Life with Woodpecker (my favorite Tom Robbins, because the heroine of that novel, Leigh Cheri has red hair, "as red and straight as ironed ketchup") and every other Tom Robbins book with the exception of his children's book B is for Beer (it has a beer fairy and is written in the whimsy that only Robbins can master). I thought again of my high school friend Ms. B and all the naughty, sexy secrets I had learned from Mr. Robbins because she said to me, "read this book." Ms. B, by the way, drove a Volkwagen Beetle in high school as did I. Hers was red and named Bonanza Jellybean (one of the main characters from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues). Mine was blue and named Ringo.
I know, I wax nostalgic, but that is precisely the point: When I see books by Tom Robbins, when I hold that small, softened-by-the-years copy of Another Roadside Attraction, I think of Ms.B, think of high school and how I broke my middle finger in the door of my VW bug, think of homecoming parades and letter sweaters; I smell autumn and feel a little chubby, freckled, and awkward again. But I would open the books he wrote and read about men with limps and horribly crooked teeth, women with wild hair, huge thumbs, and the most vibrant names (Marx Marvelous, John Paul Ziller, Bernard Mickey Wrangle, Ellen Cherry Charles, Boomer Petway, to name a few). I didn't feel quite as bizarrely unique as the brightness of my hair and Pollock-like spatterings of freckles led me to feel.
I also came upon a few books that I would rather forget, but I would not get rid of them, unpleasant memories of giver aside. I love books. They tell me their secrets, fill my senses with the emanations of wood, forested dirt, wind moving through trees, and grittiness on the fingertips as you turn the page slowly so as to not even permit a sigh between words. Books teach me their words and show me their hidden places and people; from philosophizing about the pyramid on a pack of Camels, to the Castles of Winterfell, to Gary Snyder as he walks up the mountainside, to Edward Abbey rolling cigarettes as he works as a fire outlook, to Scarlett O'Hara proclaiming "Tomorrow is another day."
"Does the moon have a purpose? Are redheads supernatural? Who knows how to make love stay? I am going to submit these question to the Remington SL3. Like a war between magicians, it can last a long time, and even then the outcome may not be what it appears to be." From Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins.
So, I guess no kindle.
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