There is a particular type of book – I suppose it must be very individual for each person, but generally this type of book is either a favorite novel, well thumbed and read many times, a book from childhood with a silly story but beautiful writing, or sometimes even just a Peanuts comic-book from the sixties. These books are comfort, at least to me.
When I’m feeling horrible, or just down and sad for no reason, all I need is to pick up a book like this, tuck myself into bed, and read for a couple hours.
The yellow pages seem the most beautiful thing in the world and the crinkle as I turn them is like music to my ears. The smell – ah, the smell! I sometimes literally pause in my reading and bury my nose in the spine, sniffing up the memories of childhood, when I first read the book, or the countless bus-rides and walks to school when I read it, or even just the memory of being exactly where I’m sniffing, curled up in my bed, just a few months or years beforehand.
Some people have comfort foods – ice-cream, chocolate, warm milk. I have comfort books.
love
Rosy Thoughts [Part II]
“Damn wind-chimes,” muttered Matt as he closed the door softly on his daughter’s sleeping form. She was genuinely asleep, finally, and Matt didn’t want the “chink-chink” of the dishes clinking against each other in the kitchen sink to wake her. He stood outside the closed door for a moment and sighed, then braced himself and walked into the kitchen.
A dark-haired woman, Laura, was standing at the sink, soap running through her fingers and steam fogging up part of her glasses as she bent over the sink and washed the few dishes that were in there. She heard Matt walk in, and her shoulders stiffened slightly. She wished he would move out already. Even though he slept on the couch, his presence in the house seemed to fill her every waking moment with an itch she couldn’t scratch without making it bleed.
“Coffee?” Matt offered quietly as switched on the electric kettle. Something in Laura seemed to break, and she turned off the water-tap.
“Yes, please.”
Matt reached into the cupboard and took out two mugs as Laura dried her hands on the dishtowel and sat down at the kitchen table, burying her face in her hands. They smelled lemony from the soap. She hated the smell of lemon. Stupid grocery store, she thought, why do they always run out of the good smelling soap?
“What are we going to do about her, Lor’?” Matt set a steaming mug of coffee in front of Laura and took the seat across from her, taking a long sip from his own, equally steaming mug. Laura’s shoulders stiffened and then slumped again as she picked up her mug. Her shoulders were aching, she was making that move so many times each day.
“I don’t know…” she murmured. “Do you think there’s something seriously wrong with her?”
“Um. Yes?! She’s been in bed for a week, goddammit! She’s hardly eating, she hardly responds to us! How can you be so calm about it?” Matt spoke barely above a whisper, still afraid to wake his daughter, but his tone was clearly one of a man who very much wanted to shout.
“Oh Matt, give me a break – she’s upset! It’s natural! She’s drawing attention to herself. I love her so much, and I’m worried about her too, you know, but I’m worried about how she’s going to be when the divorce is final more than I’m worried about her now.” Laura couldn’t bear to look at Matt. She felt somehow that his worry was an insult, as if he cared more for Rosy than she did. She knew the thought was ridiculous, and also knew that Matt was being disgustingly naïve, believing Rosy was really sick when Rosy was obviously sick at heart but not in body.
“I don’t want to leave while she’s like this. I can’t do it, Lor’,” Matt voice broke on the word ‘leave.’ He seemed on the verge of tears for a moment, but then he pulled himself together and looked at his still-wife-soon-to-be-ex-wife defiantly. “I won’t leave her. It’s not fair to her. It’s not fair to me. I don’t want to divorce her.”
“Matt!” Laura’s face turned red and she seemed to be close to yelling. Her voice was getting louder with every word. “We had an agreement! We cannot, I repeat, CANNOT keep living in the same house. All we’re doing is making Rosy more and more upset. She can hear us fighting, she can hear us talking to the lawyer, she can hear every damn word and THAT is why she’s hiding in her bed. We need to have some time apart or we will not be able to work this out for her!”
The two adults glared at each other for a moment. It was Matt who looked away first, taking another angry sip from his mug. This conversation would continue for a while, and he had no idea who would win the argument. Laura usually won, but Matt was determined in this. He could not leave Rosy when she was lying in bed like a little ghost of the bubbly twelve-year old girl he remembered from just a few weeks ago, before she had gotten wind of the divorce.
Rosy lay in bed all this time, truly asleep for the first time in days. Her hand was curled around the pillow and her dreams were of her childhood, when there weren’t any worries past which stuffed animal was missing an eye and how much the bruise from falling over hurt.
Panoramic View
Standing at the edge of the yard, beyond the pool, beyond the odd bust of the Indian chief, right in the flower garden, trying hard not to step on the precious buds, is a girl. She’s wearing a short t-shirt and hugging herself against the cool morning breeze that ruffled her sleeves and her long hair. She closes her eyes and smiles into the morning sunlight, feeling glad despite having slept only a handful of hours.
When she opens her eyes again, she really looks, really stares hard at the view in front of her. So strange to have a yard end and have the wilderness begin right after the fence. The valley stretches out below her, and she gazes at it intently, trying to see wildlife – a few deer perhaps, a coyote. As usual, she sees nothing but the shrubs and trees and the vast greenness of the hills.
At last, she raises her eyes beyond the valley, beyond the hills, to stare at the tiny patch of blue, slightly darker than the sky, that is right there in that little break between the hills. The ocean. Sometimes she can even smell the salt-air from here, despite being miles away.
Eventually, she’ll walk in her bare feet back into the house and have breakfast with her family, who will all be waking up early due to jet-lag, just like her. That first morning of every visit to Los Angeles’s beautiful hills is always like this – magical.
Technophilia
I have a new screen, and it’s incredible. There’s something SO satisfying about new gadgets – be it a new ipod, a new laptop, a new computer, a new screen, new speakers… Anything that makes your technological experience better. As one who grew up with computers, grew up with consoles and the internet, I adapt super quickly to any new technology, and I’m thankful for it ten times a day.
I learned to touch type just by typing all the time. I learned to install programs and check basic things about the computer just from trying things out. I learned to be a gamer from watching my older brother play games on the computer all my childhood. As nostalgic as I can be when reading a Jane Austen novel, I won’t ever really want to live in a time where information wasn’t easily accessible and when it wasn’t part of the daily routine to be online with your friends or writing in your blog.
Technology is awesome. Sure, we’re all going to kill ourselves with it eventually, but hey, it’s not going to be during my lifetime or yours, so why worry about it?
To Be Held
Sometimes you need to be held. Really need to, a deep need that runs through your body all through to the very core of your emotions, somewhere deep inside that odd squiggly chemical thing that is our brain. Sometimes things, no matter how small and insignificant, feel like too much. Sometimes just knowing you’re going to have to wake up the next morning is too much.
Those are the times when you need to be held most of all. When you’re lonely, you want someone there, sure. When you’re angry or depressed, you need someone to anchor you as well. But sometimes there are just these moments of pure and utter hopelessness. You know it’ll pass. It’s just a mood. Just another chemical being processed through your brain. It doesn’t mean anything. Tomorrow you’ll wake up and work and do everything you need to do, just like any other day.
But it’s just that, well, sometimes someone holding you makes everything better, at least for one, priceless, endless moment. And that moment can keep you going.
Two Years
My father died exactly two years ago. I can’t express how much I miss him. Really, I can’t. He was just the most amazing human being, and the most amazing father. He treated my brother and me as human beings, not as children, never as children. He respected us, and found so much to love and be proud of in us, which in turn made us happy, because we respected and loved him so very much.
His presence was so strong, even if he was silent. He always had the radio on, sometimes to good music and sometimes to bad, annoying music or loud and obnoxious talk shows. He never listened when it was on – he was always reading the paper or writing when the radio was on. But he didn’t like the house being silent. I think the most touching moments I’d ever seen my parents in was when a song they both loved came on, and they would start dancing together, bopping around and kissing and embarrassing my brother and I. I realize now, of course, that that was wonderful, so beautiful, so miraculous for two people to have been married for so long and to still have been so much in love.
My largest and most horrifying fear is that I’ll forget my father one day. Forget how it felt to walk hand in hand with him when I was little, forget how it was to be mad at him, forget how it was when he sang me his lullaby, forget how it was to watch him doing exercises and then sitting down to watch the news, forget how he read my papers for school and helped me improve them, forget the smell of his cigarettes and coffee in the morning and the cake or cookie he ate as his breakfast. I haven’t forgotten yet, no, but what if I will one day?
My LA Haven
This is the way it’s always been:
Once I enter the large wood-framed glass doors, whether they’re in the mall or next to Ralph’s, my world shifts subtly, becoming a place of beauty and opportunity and most of all, calm. My cares drift away, and I let myself go, knowing I’m in a safe place. I wander the carpeted walkways, the halls, sometimes going up and down escalators. I gaze appreciatively at this corner or that, checking also if any of the chairs in the nooks are taken and if I might have a chance of collapsing into one later.
As a child, my steps, guided by a parent’s or relative’s hand, led me to the section with the big “JR.s” sign above it. All the shelves were at reachable child level, there were dolls and games in a corner and there was the same hand that had led me before, pointing out titles and pictures, helping me pick and choose.
Later, as I grew older, I would venture into that section alone, looking for the taller shelves. I would find my heart’s desires there – whether they were embodied by girls who rode horses and lived in the country or by boys and their dogs or detectives or super heroes. When my hands were too full to carry any more, I would plop myself down on the floor and lean against the shelves or recline in one of the comfy chairs by the windows and wait until my mother and brother were ready to go and pay.
Today, I feel the echoes of these times with me whenever I stride confidently through the vast halls and floors of Barnes&Noble. I focus my energies on the Fantasy-and-Sci-Fi section and the Young-Adult section – for it often holds fantasy novels as well and some adorable easy reading material besides. Whenever I am in the US, most specifically my beloved LA, I beg to be left alone in the shop for a couple hours so I can make my purchases and buy myself a strong coffee and read, cracking the spines of the new books with joy.
The Meaning of Life
42.
Har har.
The meaning of life is to find the meaning of life, so when you’ve found the meaning of life, you don’t have a meaning to your life anymore.
Har har.
The truth, as far as I’m concerned anyway, is that there is no meaning to life other than what we make of it. Life is something we’re in all the time, we cannot step outside of it and look at it objectively, finding in it some grand pattern that is the meaning of it.
The meaning of life is your first kiss, your first love, the way your mother looked at you in second grade when you were on stage, the way your brother helped push you on the swing, the way you feel in your best friend’s arms, your favorite coffee brand, your habits. The meaning of life is how you cried when your grandfather died, how you withstood the pain of your arm breaking, the way you toiled to get a good grade, a good job. The meaning of life is your dog barking when you come home, the trivial anger at someone shoving in front of you in line, the way you rant about the things that you’re passionate about and the way you save money every month to be able to pay rent. The meaning of life is LIVING it. What else could it be?
Little Dramas
It’s so strange how, as the time goes by, I learn more and more about my co-workers and their dramatic little lives. I feel rather privleged that I’m considered trustworthy enough to become privy to their lives. Then again, I also know that they know as well as I do that we’re not really friends, and we’ll never really be friends. We’re just people who are stuck together for a few hours a day and we better try to make conversation and get along or we’ll turn those hours into hell. But now, onto some of the dramas!
A. lives with her husband and her twenty month-old daughter in a small apartment with her mother-in-law. She is the mother-in-law from hell, the real classic kind, and A’s life is a misery. She’s trying to raise money to be able to move out of their already, and she seems to be blossoming in her job, having something of her own for the first time in years.
I. was religious. She met a boy, fell in love, and slept with him. She had iregularities with her period after that, and fainted from loss of blood. She was hospitalized and through this her mother learned somehow that I. lost her virginty. I. was then shunned completely, and at twenty, she already lives alone and completely supports herself out of necessity.
Last but not least, we have S. who is in love with a man who probably won’t be able to ever give her what she wants, which is commitment. At her birthday party a few days ago, her friends surprised her by bringing him, after they hadn’t seen each other for months. They slept together, and then she realized he’s the same as he always was, cannot commit and doesn’t realize that he’s with someone who’s willing to give her all. And so, mere days after her hope was egnited, it was cruely extinguished again.
Sonnet ’49
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advis’d respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here,
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand, against my self uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
Since why to love I can allege no cause.
I may not be well versed in the works of Shakespeare yet, but believe me, I intend to be one day. I found this sonnet by accident while studying for the SAT subject tests. It was in one of the practice tests I did, and I remember freezing and reading it over and over until I got the intonation and the meaning just right. The humanity and simplicity of the poem just staggers me. It is beautiful, and so typical – just a person, a regular person, being so scared that they’re not worthy of their loved one and sure that they’ll leave them one day. It’s amazing how little humanity changes over the years when it comes down to the day to day emotions and characteristics.
Slightly Ignorant 