To glove or not to glove

I went through a spell in elementary school where I wore a glove on one hand, copying Michael Jackson. It looked a little funny for me to be signing with one bare hand and one covered hand, and my teachers tried to get me to take it off. I refused--one has to suffer for fashion, you know.

Books in time

I tend to have odd associations between places I've been and the books I was reading while I was in those places.

Most recently, when Jon and I were getting onto the interstate after a time trial just outside Shelbyville, KY, I had an intense recollection of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I had been reading the last time we were in Shelbyville for a bike race. We were on the merge lane, a scrappy bit of pavement with humps of broken asphalt littering the shoulder. I glanced at the grass and scrubby bushes bordering the lane, and the black and green cover of American Gods popped to mind, down to the part of the book I had been in the last time we were on this merge lane (the protoganist had died and was making his way through the underworld before being called back).

Here are some other associations I have:

Whenever I pick up my tattered, yellowed 1970s paperback copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, I am mindful of my parents' family room: the beige walls, nubby carpet, couch with the faintly plaid pattern. The window by the couch is covered with green ivy, and what light comes through is pale, weak with rain.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes hand in hand with our old living room from South Broadway Park. I remember tracking the progress of the sunlight across the hardwood floor every time I looked up from the book when I was reading it for the first time, and so this book comes with connotations of hardwood warmed with light, patterned by the shadows of leaves.

That's all I can remember for now. Until I pick up the next book.

Moving away

We are about to move into a house outside of Lexington. We are ready, but even so....here is what I will miss:

• hot almond croissants from Magee's
• being able to walk to places
• Central Library with its three levels of books (the county library where we will be just doesn't compare)
• the cats sleeping in the window displays at Decoratifs
• walking past the twisted trees in Woodland Park at dusk
• seeing grungy UK students, particularly that one that walks everywhere with a flowery umbrella and one pant leg rolled up (the emblem of the fixed gear crowd)
• driving through downtown Lexington on our way home
• living amongst bungalows
• Good Foods buffet
• the lights at Triangle Park
• the old man at the YMCA who faithfully works out on the recumbent bike with all the speed of a turtle

That's all I can think of for now.

No wonder kids are afraid of the dentist

I have very vague memories of my own experiences being drugged at the dentist. I remember the strange experience of coming to and still feeling as though I were dreaming and trying to communicate with my limbs through a fog thicker than cotton candy. All I remember of my surroundings are legs and arms supporting me and a voice at my ear, and a distant awe at a doorway flooded with light.
Looking at that description, it almost seems as if I had visited the tunnel of light.

The place of remembering

The library is always in an interesting place. It must be forward thinking, even as it must preserve the past, keeping it present for the next generation. This is a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it.

I realized this while listening to A. telling Tamera about the move to make Holocaust-denial illegal. It's hard to imagine that people would refuse to admit the Holocaust, but the more years that separate us from that cruel event, the more distant it becomes, relegated to books, photographs, documents, for more and more survivors are passing away, their memories locked away beyond death.

Yet those materials, however pale in comparison to the memories of survivors, are taking the place of those memories, taking over the task of remembering. And where are these materials of remembering usually housed? At libraries (and archives, museums, personal collections), so one sees the unique role libraries have in society. I never thought about how critical that role was until I heard the story of Holocaust-denial.

The associations we come up with

Cumin smells like hiker b.o. after several days.

Jon made lamb korma the other day, and every time I got a whiff, I was immediately transported into the woods. The memory was so strong, I could remember my dirty fingernails, the pack sitting on my hips, the knot of an ache in each of my calves, and the scent of hiker b.o. whenever a breeze came our way. Of course, none of this overrides the joy of being outside, summiting a mountain, seeing bear scat on the trail, seeing trees so tall you lose any sense of exactly how high they reach.

Down to the creek

A place that I consider very dear to my heart is no longer in the family. My aunt and uncle have moved away from their place in the country. They had no choice in the matter, so I am quite happy that they have found a wonderful new home.

But there is still a queer sensation in my stomach as I think about the lane Jenny, Rosie, and I walked down countless times, gravel crunching underneath as we laughed and talked about everything--boys, friends, school, books, everything silly and serious that concerns growing girls.

The cats and dogs would always keep us company, the cats pretending that they just happened to be heading our way, the dogs too stupid to care about pretense. They would leap and prance, snapping at the air, happy to be going somewhere. There was nearly always a hawk in the air, hunting in the fields bordering the lane.

We would cross the road at the end of the lane and forge our way through the sharp waist-high prairie grass to the creek--for the creek was nearly always our destination, a hidden place. You never knew where exactly its path was until you nearly fell in, for the creek was always changing its way through the grass, subtly, slowly with each passing year.

It seems we grew up there, though I know we hardly went there as often as memory misleads me to think. But we went often enough that it has become a backdrop for my childhood--the prairie grass and the wide open wind mixing with such sensations as the smell of woodsmoke and the harsh scrape of Grandpa's mustache when he kissed my cheek and the crisp page of a book in my hands as my parents and I all sit quietly together, reading.

All this serves to tell me what this queerness is: I am grieving.

When I was little, I knew that there were wolves in the basement. A child doesn't care for the distinction between reality and dreams; both are equally strong presences in his life.

At night, I always crept into the kitchen (the stairs to the basement were at the far end), and gathered my snack foods as quietly as I could, then turned and ran as though my life depended on it. I remember shadows moving on the floor in the dining room as I dashed through, wildly thinking that the wolves were on my heels. Later, I know that the shadows were only from the tree-branches outside, waving in the night wind. But that moment in my child-life was real.

Now there is a children's book out: The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman. My memory of the wolves in the basement came flooding back. That's one of the things I love about books and reading. Every once in a while, a book comes along that revisits some part of your life, or brings back memories of a long-past era. Lately I have been so busy growing up that I forgot what it was like to be a child, when terror was as simple and as real as wolves in the basement.

Another thing about books is the feeling that some of them bring of entering a light-filled den where dad is calmly watching TV and mom is working on her needlestitch. The wolves in the basement disappear, forgotten as I step into the light and join my family.

PS--I have a new blog that got posted further down, below "Monday October 10th". Mom will probably like it.