..scootch, scootch, stall; scootch, stall, catastrophic reversal; bog, bog, scootch.”
Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

In her book, Grace (Eventually), Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott tells the story of how when she and her 10 year old son moved into their new house he was afraid to sleep in his new bedroom which was much further away from hers than in their old house – separated by two rooms and two short hallways.

They devised a plan to get him to sleep in his room. He slept in a sleeping bag which on the first night was on her bed. Each night they would move it about 3 feet.  First to the foot of her bed. The next to the floor next to her bed. He made it to the door on the fourth night but stayed there for two nights before he could make it into the hallway. The were three nights in the hallway and another four  during which he traversed the living room with “four three-foot scootches, one stall, and a one night when he had to drag his sleeping bag three feet”.

I absolutely love this story. What a brave sweet boy he was. The quote at the beginning of the post is how Anne describes her own attempts to make progress in her life , “with family, in work, relationships, self-image“.

Over the past year I’ve been scootching along very nicely in all areas of my life. Yes there have been some stalls, but they haven’t lasted long and I’ve been able to get myself scootching along again without to much trouble.

Over the last month or so however I’ve had a series of catastrophic reversals.  After having moved pretty far along in several areas like diet and self-image it all went to hell in the proverbial hand basket.

My self-esteem has taken a self-inflicted and deadly beating.

All the ways in which I feed my soul – writing, reading, meditation, exercise have been grossly neglected if not eliminated.

My diet has had the most catastrophic reversal of all. I stopped eating the minimum 50% raw food diet I’d been aiming for. I stopped drinking my daily beloved green-smoothies which make me feel so good. I stopped eating fresh fruit and vegetables and drinking enough water.

Its not just a case of me not eating the healthy, nurturing food that I’ve been trying to make my primary source of nourishment – I actually regressed to the point of eating and drinking things I’d long given up.  In the past month I think I’ve had 4 sodas (pop/cola/soft-drinks). Those who know me will be shocked, knowing that I gave up soda several years ago. It has been the one vice which I have never felt a desire to pick-up. I have eaten candy. Lots of it. Something I don’t particularly like. But I did it anyway.

Last weekend, I set out on a quest for my old nemesis – Popeye’s fried chicken. It wasn’t easy. It required a special trip to a mall that I happen to know has a Popeyes in it. I spent 20 minutes driving around this gargantuan mall in search of the food court and because it was so busy I had to walk though acres of parking in sub-zero temperatures. (OK maybe they weren’t sub-zero but it sure felt like it.) Obviously I was jonesing pretty badly for that southern fried chicken and was willing to go to any lengths to get it. Even braving the frigid cold.

What has happened to make me regress in this insane way?

I don’t know. All I can tell you is that the regression has spread like a petroleum-fueled blaze. So powerful and quick has it been that I’ve only been able to watch in horror as one act of self-violation has led to another.  And as it has spread I’ve felt more and more awful. My body is staging a revolt. My digestive system has all but gone on strike. My skin is losing its brightness and dark circles are starting to reappear under my eyes. I have no energy. My mind is fogged over and moves with the speed of an ant that’s been thrown into a vat of molasses. Depression has crept in and shrouded me in its pervasive cloak. I have been feeling like shyte in body, mind and soul.

The good news is that I’ve stopped to take a breath and refocus on what I’m scootching towards. I’m stopping the madness.

In Anne Lamott’s essay, after a massive binge involving fried apple-fritters, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and fried jalapeno poppers – she finds herself immersed in “waves of nausea and self-loathing”.  She calls a friend who says:

“You struggled through something really miserable. You told the truth when its to tempting to cover up and disguise it. You said ‘This is the mess of my life, and I need help.’ And now you’re being helped.”

So I guess I’m telling the truth and asking for help. It certainly helps to “talk” about it. I feel better. And as a wise friend advised me, I’m not going to beat myself up for beating myself up.

I am being helped. Going to my writing group yesterday helped push my reset button. Picking up a couple of my favorite books helped. Eating  a fresh persimmon for breakfast helped. Help is always at hand.

Isn’t this what life is like for many of us though?  The constant steady scootching; the frustration of stalls and bogs and the devastation of catastrophic reversal.

The only thing I’ve been able to figure out is that you have to keep on scootching. You have to be kind to yourself, remember what it is that you are scootching towards and recognize how damn far you’ve scootched already!

I’ve been accused by many of being a total geek.   They’re probably right.

Even though I consider myself to be the least geeky technology person I know, there are some aspects of technology which make me giddy.

If you pair my love of cool technology with my even bigger love of BOOKS, you’ve got a recipe for off the charts giddiness.

Such was my joy today when I visited one of my favorite spots on the net – LivingSocial.

LivingSocial is social networking tool that lets you catalog your interests and share them with other people. Right now you can manage books, tv shows, music, movies, video games restaurants and beer. I use the books feature and on a lesser scale music.  If they add shoes and wine to their offerings then my cup will runneth over – hopefully with a tasty pinot noir.

So here’s how it works. I’ll use the book example because that’s what I love.

I use LivingSocial:Books to keep a record of all the books I am reading, have read and want to read. Adding books is as easy as searching for a book on Amazon. And just like Amazon, LivingSocial makes recommendations for you based on your prior selections. How cool is that?

If someone recommends a book to me I add it to my list and mark it as Want to Read.  With one click I can change a book’s status from Want to Read to Already Read.

In and of itself, the ability to have a database of all the books I’m interested in is very cool – but it gets better.

What makes this a social network is the fact that it’s — well– “social”.  You can become “friends” with other people in the same way you do on MySpace or Facebook. I can see what books my friends are reading.   I can check out book reviews written by my friends and others. I can write my own reviews. I can also participate in discussions of books with other people on LivingSocial who have read them

There’s more! I know – its all too much – but stick with me.

Because the folks who develop LivingSocial are too cool for school, you can also use LivingSocial in Facebook and some other social networks. I first started using LivingSocial in Facebook and continue to do so.  I love checking out what my friends are reading.  Even those in other countries who I don’t get to speak to very often.  I often discover new books by following what they’re reading and vice versa.

Today I discovered the latest feature to be added to LivingSocial and I LOVE it.

It’s a nifty little widget which you can check out in the sidebar on the right of this blog. (If you read my posts via e-mail you’ll need to go to the site in order to see the widget).

The widget allows me to embed my LivingSocial account on the blog. You can see what I’m reading right now. And yes, if you’re wondering, it’s very current and accurate. The books that you see there are the books sitting on my night stand. As soon as I start a new book I add it to my now reading list. I’m pretty obsessive about it.

If you click on the blue next button, you can also see a couple of other lists: some of my favorite spiritual reads, books I’ve already read and books I plan on reading some day.

If you’re an avid reader, I highly recommend LivingSocial. Visit them at http://www.livingsocial.com to see how it works. If you decide you love it, look me up and add me as a friend.

If you’re already on FaceBook and you’re one of my friends, you can check out my profile and you’ll see my books on there. You can add LivingSocial to your own Facebook account from there.

If you’re not already on FaceBook and want to get started, then go ahead and Facebook me! You know you want to.

Happy Reading.

“…what I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple, accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.”
Chris Abani
From a TED talk recorded February 2008 in Monterey, California

I’ve just gotten home from spending 4 days at the largest poetry event in the known multiverse. I was sure I would have so much to say, but surprisingly I don’t.

Maybe it’s because I worked the event, and I’m still feeling exhausted. Or perhaps its because I’m still blissed out on what I did hear.

I feel like I’m still assimilating and absorbing some of what I heard.

I will say this. Undoubtedly, the highlight for me was getting to meet a writer that I have long admired. His novels are achingly beautiful, and as I discovered from listening to him read, so are his poems.

I speak of the amazing Nigerian writer and poet Chris Abani. I must admit that I have a total writers crush on his work. It is extraordinary. He published his first novel when he was 16. The novel, called Masters of the Board, is a political thriller about a failed Nigerian coup. The story was convincing enough that he was thrown in jail by the Nigerian government under suspicion of inciting a real-life coup. He was arrested twice more, put in solitary confinement and tortured. Much of his poetry is based on the harrowing experiences of the time he spent in prison.

What I find particularly remarkable is that while he writes about the darkest recesses of the human soul, his work is uncompromisingly life and humanity affirming. He writes with a beautiful juxtaposition of darkness and light. He is a truly “human” writer if that makes any sense. He’s also very kind, funny and gracious.

At the end of one of his readings my friend was standing behind a woman who turned to her companion and said “He is a miracle of a poet”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I was able to listen to him several times, got a book signed and even talked to him briefly and asked a couple of questions, which he graciously answered. And look….I even got my picture taken with him

]]> http://thesublimepassage.com/2008/09/29/blissed-out-on-words/feed/ 1 http://thesublimepassage.com/2008/09/19/oprahs-latest-book-club-pick/ http://thesublimepassage.com/2008/09/19/oprahs-latest-book-club-pick/#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:42:29 +0000 Sue http://thesublimepassage.com/?p=146 Big news. The woman who has catapulted many a writing career into the stratospheres of success is getting ready to do it again with the announcement of her latest Book Club pick, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by first-time novelist, David Wroblewski. The big O is making the announcement on her show today.

Needless to say I’m headed to the nearest book store ASAP, and I will have the book in my grubby little fingers by this evening.

Check out the Oprah Book Club site for details on the selection, and read a message from the author, written especially for O Book Club members. Nice!

Did you know that you can download a special O Book Club bookmark complete with the dates for Q&A Fridays with the author and a place to write quotes/notes as you read? She thinks of everything.

I can’t wait to start reading.

“Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.”

“If my mind is crowded with ideas or thoughts or plans or other people’s creations there is less room for my own.  And it is my own mind and journey that I wish to experience, because it is from this vantage point that I can most truly engage others.

Alice Walker
We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness

Paulo Coelho
The Zahir

 

 

 

When I was a teenager, someone gave me this little spiral bound notebook as a gift. I started using it to write down my favorite quotes and passages from the books I read. Pretty easy to do considering that I always had a book attached to my face. (Not much has changed in that regard).  At the time I didn’t think too much about why I started doing that. I was just writing down the words that “spoke” to me on some level.

Sometimes it was something that made me laugh, or cry. Something that inspired me, or seemed profound to my teenage mind.  A lot of times it was an exquisite juxtaposition of words that was so beautiful I couldn’t stand it.

I don’t remember when I stopped using this notebook. I think it was in college when the majority of my reading became academic, and when I wasn’t reading I was too busy partying to read  Now that I have a “library”, I have been inspired to pick this habit up again. My relationship with my books has been renewed. I often find myself “visiting” with my books. Running my hands over them and picking one out at random, letting it fall open to a page and seeing where I land. This renewed relationhip has brought me back to collecting the quotes I love in my little notebook.  It’s also made me wonder what it is about  about reading someone else’s words that is so powerful. What makes someone want to write down those words, read them repeatedly and even share them with other people? What comfort do we get from this?

There is the obvious inspiration that we often get when we read certain things. An emotion is triggered. Happiness, inspiration, sadness, nostalgia, laughter, contemplation. Often the words serve as a reminder of some notion we want to hold in the forefront of our minds. Sometimes its a cue, a trigger for something. I have quotes that serve as anchors when I’m experiencing a certain state of mind. When I am feeling insecure, unworthy and generally unfabulous, for example, there is no quote that brings me greater comfort than this famous Marianne Williamson quote:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

For me however, the most powerful way in which quotes seem to impact me is by expressing something that I am unable to say for myself. In fact in most cases, I’m not even aware that there is something unsaid floating around in my being until I read something. Many of the most profound realizations I’ve had in my life have come from reading someone else’s words and recognizing that they were saying exactly what I needed to say, but couldn’t.  I’ve read passages that confirmed something I may have known in the deepest part of me, but could never articulate.  It’s as if the reading of a passage unlocks the box in my subconscious where that knowing is stored. Once it is unlocked, there is a sense of recognition and I think to myself “I know this to be true”.Â

Anais Nin said it best when she said:

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say

It occurs to me that my favorite writers and books are those those which seem to say all the things I am unable to, for whatever reason.  Those whose words unlock the hidden secrets of my own knowing and help me to to tap into my own wisdom. This is the power of other people’s words!

I will start sharing some of my favorite quotes. I’d love to hear what some of yours are too.

It took a lot longer than I intended to complete my “library but its done!  

Many weeks ago, I dedicated a day to visiting to Ikea with my wonderful handymen . We returned with boxes full of bookshelves which they spent several hours putting together for me. They are gorgeous. (The shelves, not the handymen). Even more gorgeous is the sight of them filled with my beloved books.

It’s my own little slice of heaven, complete with a comfy reading chair courtesy of the Ikea As-Is department. I often find myself just standing and looking at the library in admiration. I’ve always had this vision of a big light-filled room lined with white floor to ceiling bookshelves all filled with books.  While the library is not quite as huge as the one of my imaginings, its still beautiful.

This is the first time in my life that I’ve had all my books in one location and in easy view. As I set about arranging them I swung back and forth between thinking “Oh my goodness, I have a LOT of books” and “Oh, I don’t have as many books as I thought.” The jury is still out on my final conclusion.

As I organized the books I made some interesting observations:

1. My favorite writers of fiction/literature are Alice Walker, Yvonne Vera, Amy Tan, Paulo Coehlo and Chinua Achebe. (based on # of books)
2. My favorite non-fiction writers are Marianne Williamson (no surprise there), Osho (big surprise there – or maybe not) and Neale Donald Walsch.
3. A LOT of my books are Oprah’s Book Club picks (absolutely no surprise there).
4. I love African literature (makes sense).
5. I love women writers (makes sense).
6. I have a lot of half-read books.
7. I have even more unread books  (40+ to be exact).
8. I have WAY more books of the romance genre than I realized. (Hmmm, I wonder where I got all those unrealistic expectations of relationships which plagued my twenties?).
9. As far as I’m concerned, the line between fiction and non-fiction is very fuzzy. Example: If I love a work of fiction so much that it’s characters are real to me, doesn’t it belong in the non-fiction section? And which section does a Million Little Pieces belong in? Fiction? Memoir? More importantly, what’s the difference anyway?
10. Finally, and most shockingly I believe that if I had to choose between only being able to buy shoes OR books for the rest of my life, I would have to say farewell to the shoes! Shocking but true.

If you’re interested in seeing exactly what fills the shelves of the library, check out my online library. This is a digital representation of my reading life. You can see what books I am currently reading, have read and want to read. I am still working on getting all the books I own into the library, but I’ve got well over 500 books in it currently.

I leave you with this:

“One of the questions that haunts me – it’s a question for philosophers and brain science- is, if you’ve forgotten a book, is that the same as never having read it?
Tom Stoppard

One last thought. Have you noticed that almost everything I write about is about books in one way or another?