I keep forgetting that the body remembers...

I'm realizing now how much this blog speaks to Zoe's last post, which I believe speaks to a larger shift that is happening either because of the seasonal ruminations, or perhaps a marked increase in my dairy consumption. Either way, if Zoe and I are thinking about this stuff, ya'll must be too. After all it is almost time for the rabbit, clover, Passover and Purim to make their way into the proverbial "candy aisle" of our collective third eye.

It is the season of waking up, and often times waking up means that weird tingling after you have been sitting on your foot for hours on end eating Cheetos. Such waking can be alarming and uncomfortable. It always involves the body making noise and moving and feeling stuff. Although it hasn't been a real winter, it has been a winter, and the fever of spring is a comin', especially today.

Usually before we open on Sundays I take a moment to browse and see what's new. As my interests have taken a serious about face in the direction of yoga, I found myself in our yoga & health section. What I found there was kind of amazing. I picked up Overcoming Trauma through Yoga, and realized after a bit that these authors were local, and that the institute they work for is literally down the road form this here!
Who knew this was right under our noses here in Brookline?

:Learn more about classes and services here:

Right next to that title was Ana Forrest's book Fierce Medicine.






Ana is famous for her eponymous brand of yoga which is touted for dealing head-on with internal walls and blockages that have kept the individual form realizing their true spiritual and physical capabilities. Ana herself is open about the trauma she endured in early life, and how she fashioned herself a a form of healing though her own yogic "fierce medicine". The book is radical and moving. I like the fact that she's a little more rough and tumble than the other famous yoga memes.

As the creator of Forrest Yoga , Ana T. Forrest has been transforming people’s lives throughout the world for more than thirty-five years. Her unique blend of physical practice, Eastern wisdom, and profound Native American ceremony takes her teachings literally off the mat and into daily life—to heal everything from addictive behaviors and eating disorders to chronic pain and injury. In Fierce Medicine, Forrest tells her own story of healing from the scars of abuse and physical handicaps, and reveals the proven practices that enabled her to move beyond her past into a life committed to helping others reconnect with their bodies, cultivate balance, and start living in harmony with their Spirits.

Sometimes this store is a deck of Tarot cards...as you are shuffling through the aisles you are likely to stumble into a pocket of meaningful directives; put there by some benevolent force to help guide you through this transition ino spring, that itchy overly-happy optimistic season of pastels.

(And by "benevolent" I mean bookseller.)

Elizabeth Berkley; still making smart cool.

The event for her new book Ask Elizabeth was quite moving. Berkley was eloquent and composed, chatty and accessible. She even took a moment to make fun of some of her more famous choreography.

I wanted to write about this event because it was special in a few ways. Elizabeth Berkley is on the NYT best seller list, and she chose to start her talk by thanking our store. She launched into a riff about the importance of independent bookstores, and keeping communities individual, and being out among other people interacting with the world, in a manner that can't be achieved through a square interface. (my weird wording not hers.)

I grew up loving her character Jessie Spano, the leggy nerd who made being smart and commanding look cool. She got behind our podium in her 5" Louis Vuittons and was pushing 6'5". The advice she gave about self image was "If you are uncomfortable being the tall girl, then buy heels and be taller." I left the event surprised and energized. The audience asked so many great questions and she handled them all with an articulate passion.

Ask Elizabeth is now officially a nonprofit (501)c3 ...learn more about it :here:

Perhaps the best part of her talk was the moment she crossed her hands fast in a nod to her (now) cult classic, Showgirls. Berkley is super engaging because she is honest, humble and appears to be deeply committed to her work. (Bonus points for shouting out the indies!)

Alone

"What did you do at school today, Jack?"

"Nothing." Grins.

"...yeah? Nothing, really?"

"I just stared at the wall."

Which of course isn't true, it's a joke that his mom playfully uttered one day when he was stonewalling her, and he's a born comedian so he picked up on it immediately.

I watch him through the open door of the preschool, and he's calling out letters and numbers, stretching to touch his toes with the best of them, shuffling along in line with his eyes on his feet on their way back from the playground. He does stuff. He can't fool me. But, as his teacher assures us is natural for kids this age, he doesn't enjoy volunteering information about stuff that happened when we weren't there.

Maybe that's the key: we weren't there. He shares stories with me about something that happened when he was with Jess. And vice versa. But when neither of us are there...is that perhaps sacred ground? Or is it too real, too personal, to be offered up without a fight? Or is it maybe unreal? A parent is always part of the context, is always there blocking or reflecting light, up to a certain moment. Then suddenly they are not there. For the first time. What does something that happens mean to a child when their parent isn't there? It must take a while to understand events when that context is removed; when all you have is yourself. And then it must take a while before you can really know how to open those experiences up again for mom and dad to share.


I think about writers, about painters, about actors. All of them, all of us, must have had that moment, must have undergone that change, when understanding that our experiences are entirely different when nobody that knows us is around to share them. Other people being in our presence changes the way we experience things. It's why we read by ourselves, and it's why we perhaps join a club to discuss what we've read. We're getting a dim flicker of the warmth that we felt when we read books together with mom and dad.

And then I think about books in the future, if, as many say, the paper book is not long for this world. And how it may be that someday soon we will all be able to download any book in the world onto the screen in our palm, from the solitude of our own home. And I wonder how that will change our understanding of each other. And of what we experience. And will we curl up and get in dad's lap and download Dr. Seuss and he'll leap off the screen and start talking to us and the walls of the room will sprout floppy trees and I say, no Dad, not this one, we did this one last night, and when I look up at his face to tell him I don't want this one tonight, I want the ocean one, he looks like Sam I Am but that doesn't scare me, in the books he never looks like dad unless I want him to.

How will I know what it is to be alone, then?

What do you think reading will be like in a hundred years?

Kate's Holiday Tip #3..../ It feels like you are all here...in the store...right now!!!!

As if I need to exhibit any more proof of my suspect childhood...here comes Kate's second to last Holiday tip. Sigh.


Imagine everyone today....as a deer.

So- for whatever reason, when I am in large crowds, I start to imagine everyone as deer. I imagine them as the deer version of themselves...skinny jeans, glasses, baby bjorns, spandex, converse.....whatever they are wearing, they continue to wear, but as deer...deer with purses, messenger bags and helmets, deers with bags of gifts, and 20oz of hot coffee...

I have done this for as long as I can remember. When it happens- I find it soothing to think of people as my favorite spirit animal.

So during this stressful and frantic final week before gifty Mc-Gorge town....remember you can cover everyone on your list in this one store...for reals...then ...take a moment to breathe, close your weary eyes....and imagine a deer in a plaid scarf blogging at a messy desk in the back of the bustling booksmith.

Now, I'm gonna go get some free Taza chocolate from that pretty deer at the front.

Oh deer.

Hungry Eyes...Influence and Duende...Sorta

I chose this title just so while you are reading this....the song will be stuck in your head and contributing to any unintentional pathos found herein. Yesterday after work I swam home and turned on the AC and TLC....(the ladies' channel) I watched "Say Yes to the Dress" and ate some goldfish while reading poetry by Louise Gluck. I find no irony in this.

I then went on Facebook wherein I saw that my fella had taken the "I write like" test, and apparently...according to this kitschy little monstrosity....he writes like David Foster Wallace. I of course had to put in my "work" and low and behold...I too write like DFW. This got me thinking...doesn't everyone writing/ thinking in this postpostpost- modernity kinda write like DFW....in a reference rich simulacrum of conscilience? Then I found this AP article on the whole phenomena http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j93L3sF-VA-F548doKe70er5uD0wD9H0DAU81
The little nugget about Herman Melville writing more like Steven King than himself is just delightful.

It brings up an interesting idea about influence. That is why when I write I like to have reality television on in the background. I like to know a lot about Angelina Jolie and Ochocinco. I think it keeps me present and keeps my brain from swimming too deeply in Lorca's duende. I think it is important that we treat all media...well....most media with care...and by care I mean...acknowledgment of its presence...because whether we like it or not it is here to stay...and I'd like to have a really clear idea as to what it is I am making fun of, or criticizing...and why.

The book that I can't stand to have open in front of me.

The blank kind. The sort in which I was told, all through my years as an art student, that I should be filling with sketches, ideas, images that may or may not develop.
Can't open the things without wanting to run away. I made an effort recently to give it a real go, to be a man about it and keep a damn sketchbook, but that one, too, lies collecting dust in a corner of the studio, the pictures on its first twenty or so pages nothing more than brittle exoskeletons, destined never to expand, never to be a painting on my wall.
I float through life. My mind is rarely where I am; my hands count out change for you but they do it in rhythm with the music that was playing the last time they held a brush. How can I set them to work on a sketch, a plan? They only work on the real thing. How can I expect myself to grab a wave from the river and put it on paper and close the book? Will it not dry and darken; what is left when I open it up again?
I paint in the moment. It gives me comfort (when I'm not worrying about it) that I can only feel like I know what I'm doing at the exact moment that I am doing it. Sketching isn't doing it, for me. Sketch books weigh hundreds of pounds in my hands. Maybe I'll make a sculpture out of all of my abandoned sketchbooks someday.