I am finding some things out about my reading process; I like to be engaged with multiple books at the same time, a literary polygamist. When I am on my way to sleep or out in nature, I prefer fantasy or science-fi. I always need to be reading something that is non-fiction and preferably topical as this acts as a root in everyday life. I have grad plans, like reading all the classics, though those may have to wait until retirement.* In general, I prefer to hold a book, but will sometimes listen to one that has a particularly good narration, typically of the non-fiction genre.
*Retirement is not something I actually believe my generation will have the luxury of. When I say retirement, I mean when I decide to live my final days off the grid in a yurt. I’ll die in the way I want, by some means of a particularly harsh winter, perhaps buried in snow. My body stumbled upon by hikers in the spring, mostly decomposed, holding a note that reads, “Thank you for taking the time to bury me somewhere around here.
To sleep, I am on the second in the Dragonriders of Pern series, Dragonquest. It was recommended to me as a series that centers on a strong female character and that was true for the first couple chapters of the first book, but that character has faded into an idolized hero who is also suddenly subservient to her male leader partner and I am less than enthusiastic about that. It serves its purpose to put me to sleep and I keep reading, hoping her character comes back into the spotlight. I continue to chip away at Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone, our text from my class which I did not finish. It answers questions like, why do people vote against their own interests and what sorts of strategies to policy leaders use to get their agenda met. I am listening to The Yellow House, by Sarah M. Broom. It is a memoir rooted in not only in her experience as an African-American woman growing up in New Orleans East, but also in her research of city records, census data, archives and the multi-generational memories of her family. She is not much older than I, and the book makes undeniable the truth that we are not living in such different times, that systemic racism is still woven into nearly every aspect of this country’s founding, from schools to city planning and zoning, to policing.
I possess a compulsion to rearrange furniture in my house, typically when I am not feeling right in my brain. It used to be nearly constant, weekly, monthly, an effort to correct an inefficient use of space, to set things which we so constantly out of order, right. I told my therapist about this, and she said that when she works with kids who have been traumatized in play therapy they will often move the furniture around in the play house. I haven’t felt the compulsion since well before quarantine, its been months at home, feeling mostly settled despite the chaos around me. It is a signal that I have been mostly mentally stable, something I am proud of. I attribute this to a few stable and primary friendships, my unemployment claim, which thouh constantly facing has come through and to safe, stable and affordable housing. But I was ricked last week due to outside stress of the pandemic and the nearly complete loss of hope in our country and its systems, the conversations and strains that it has put on my friends and our relationships.
Preempting my need to rearrange was the indulgence of fantasy, of life different from mine. I went fully into the #hotgirlvintagervrebuildlife hole, complete with jealousy and insecurity. I let myself go all the way down and then, desperate, looked to my cat, Fabs who said with her eyes, “Me in an RV? Get real. Please don’t. I like it here.” I sat up, looked around and realized how right she was. We have a great apartment in the downtown area of a growing city, a block from the river with a view of the mountains and sunset from out patio. Plants and birds and green trees grace the outside space. This is really the best possible scenario right now what I needed was to remember that and give it a little care. So I moved a few things around, but it wasn’t the chaotic, disorganized, takes me three days and I end up with piles of stuff, rearrange like that of the past. It was medium tweaks, minor adjustments with a minimal amount of work and maximum intention, resulting in a deeper settling in.
As part of the process, I also re-arranged the books on my bookcase, this time by category. These are long shelves; the bookcase stands waist high but about six feet in length and it sits under the mounted TV as mantel the cats like to la on. It’s wood is stained a tad darker than I would like, but sanding and retaining is a project for next year, perhaps. I got it off Craigslist. It lived previously in the children’s section of a library in Payette. On the top shelf, from left to right are novels and books of essays by contemporary authors, the ones I’ve read most recently, like Swing Time and The Dutch House. Then there is the Elena Ferrante series, and then comedy and writing, then cookbooks, and finally, my spiritual and metaphysical collection, complete with the Bible I probably will never get around to reading. These collections are separated by favorite books and ones with cool covers, in a way that Kate remarked looked like how books stores do, showing off the titles they’d like to sell. I have an old copy of Little Women, Oh The Places You’ll Go, Cookbooks from the Middle East, and the Profit. On the second shelf down there are less relevant reads- old stuff like Great Expectations and For Whom the Bell Tolls, To Kill a Mockingbird, a few Steinbecks and a couple Mark Twain’s. Next is my too small collection of poetry, some older novels I haven’t read yet, travel and adventure books and then public administration, course text books. Titles like Everything I Need to Know I Learned From my Cats, The Portrait of an Alcoholic, Idaho GPS Waypoints and White Fragility. I took my Harry Potter Collection, The Hobbit and the first Dragonriders book into the bedroom, where they belong. On the last shelf, because I don’t have enough books to take up all the shelves, are my yoga blocks, a basket of cat toys, scrabble, a ukulele and a tambourine.
Next to my desk, on the small red record stand, sits my Webster’s dictionary and vocabulary builder, alongside Bernie’s Our Revolution and Gail Collins’, When Everything Changed. These are symbolic next reads. There is a messy pile of postcards and letters I intend to send. As I write I realize how incredibly lucky I am to be here in this space. Beyond luck, really it feels like a full-blown miracle to live here, to have these things and to feel any measure of peace in todays times. Fabs seems to agree as she jumps on the desk, her fur between me and this page and licks my cheek.