and tomorrow never comes.
1.24.2012
1.06.2012
jetlag, travel, and reading lists
Starting the year in Times Square (not watching the ball drop, since the NYPD had effectively barred new bystanders from the relevant viewing areas by 3pm) led to finishing the first week of the year in the city's tourist hotspots, museums, and Peter's Manhattan apartment. Which led to more reading than one might expect, as the concentrated activity during daylight hours nearly always led to long periods of downtime after early-afternoon sunsets.
Which means that I really started the year with Blue Nights and Ethan Canin's Carry Me Across the Water, both of which now haunt me far more than those Fifth Avenue window displays, Wall Street, or the Empire State Building. I'm rolling words and scenes and images through my mind's tongue as I walk and eat and think, and I feel lucky to have started the year with Joan Didion and a perfect, accidental find at the apartment's communal bookcase.
Which is not to say that New York wasn't amazing in its own right--it was. MoMA and Natural History Museum and the museum at Ellis Island filled me with a sense of physical wonder that is hard to replicate with books and in humble, underfunded Spokane museums, and I consider the trip an absolute success.
But after the jetlag passes (good lord, we flew in yesterday and I'm still reeling from the day of flying and turning back the clock), I can't guarantee that anything from the trip will continue to resonate the way those books did. When I'll think back to New York City in a few months, I imagine that my memories will be colored by my experience of reading and thinking about what I was reading while exploring the city. The two experiences have been permanently welded together.
I went to the library today--after rolling out of bed with great effort--and I checked out some new books to read before my semester starts later this month. I'm a few chapters into The Maytrees by Annie Dillard, and I've noticed that the speed of the city hasn't left me left. I'm stumbling over the airy sentences that seem to end too soon because I'm reading them to fast, and I have to remind myself, frequently, to slow down and read as though I'm breathing deeply.
I wonder what experiences I'm welding to Annie Dillard, now that I'm so conscious of how my living and reading lives intersect. I feel, currently, listless and fatigued, ambitious and drained, hopeful and cynically worn-out. Which is to say nothing at all, because I'm not sure what I'm saying. Excuse me while I go look for a grapefruit to eat while I wait for you to come home.
Which means that I really started the year with Blue Nights and Ethan Canin's Carry Me Across the Water, both of which now haunt me far more than those Fifth Avenue window displays, Wall Street, or the Empire State Building. I'm rolling words and scenes and images through my mind's tongue as I walk and eat and think, and I feel lucky to have started the year with Joan Didion and a perfect, accidental find at the apartment's communal bookcase.
Which is not to say that New York wasn't amazing in its own right--it was. MoMA and Natural History Museum and the museum at Ellis Island filled me with a sense of physical wonder that is hard to replicate with books and in humble, underfunded Spokane museums, and I consider the trip an absolute success.
But after the jetlag passes (good lord, we flew in yesterday and I'm still reeling from the day of flying and turning back the clock), I can't guarantee that anything from the trip will continue to resonate the way those books did. When I'll think back to New York City in a few months, I imagine that my memories will be colored by my experience of reading and thinking about what I was reading while exploring the city. The two experiences have been permanently welded together.
I went to the library today--after rolling out of bed with great effort--and I checked out some new books to read before my semester starts later this month. I'm a few chapters into The Maytrees by Annie Dillard, and I've noticed that the speed of the city hasn't left me left. I'm stumbling over the airy sentences that seem to end too soon because I'm reading them to fast, and I have to remind myself, frequently, to slow down and read as though I'm breathing deeply.
I wonder what experiences I'm welding to Annie Dillard, now that I'm so conscious of how my living and reading lives intersect. I feel, currently, listless and fatigued, ambitious and drained, hopeful and cynically worn-out. Which is to say nothing at all, because I'm not sure what I'm saying. Excuse me while I go look for a grapefruit to eat while I wait for you to come home.
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