"Hello, Lisa!" Geez, I just stopped in at Borders to get "Reading Lolita in Tehran," because my friend invited me today to hear its author (Azar Nafisi) speak in a few weeks. And I walked out with not only that book, but with many other books, too. Specifically: Philip Roth's "American Pastoral" and Tobias Wolff's "This Boy's Life" (because they were on a 3 for 2 sale, along with the Nafisi book); in addition to those, Frances Mayes' "A Year in the World" and Barbara Sher's "Refuse to Choose." You may recall that I've been keeping a reading list this year. Well, it has been somewhat stalled for the last few weeks, except for frantic readings of the Lamott book, which finally caught fire for me, and now I need to get back with the program!
I dare you to find a song cuter than this one, courtesy of Alice's beautiful-voiced nephew Paul. There's something about hearing a little boy use the word "metacognition" that is infinitely charming.
On the way to work the other day, I saw a man having a serious conversation with the apparently homeless guy who is typically outside me favorite coffee shop. The guy is usually smoking a cigarette butt through a long green plastic straw and talking to himself quietly. On the day when I slipped and fell hard on invisible ice, he turned around and pretended he didn't see what happened. But on this day, he was holding a conversation with a "normal" man, who was listening to him make his points as if they spoke about ships, shoes and sealing wax on a daily basis. Yes, the guy's voice was a little loud and his voice sounded scratchy, like, he rarely gets the chance to try it out. But he was having an in-depth conversation and it made me think. I thought mostly about how I had assumed on all those days of walking past the guy that we would have nothing to talk about. No, that isn't quite right. I didn't even think about talking to him, because I thought of him more as an alien creature than a fellow human being who might like a little conversation. I'm embarrassed about that. I want to do a better job of remembering what I think this small scenario was meant to remind me of.
16 March 2006
My name is Lisa, and I am a book addict.
Posted by Lisa at 11:31 PM
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1 comments:
I expect you to get those books read and we should all get a complete report on each of them by say, Sunday? That good for you?
How many people do you think don't even go to that coffee shop because they don't even want to walk past that guy and see him. It's much easier to just avoid them and not notice them.
Once when I was in Las Vegas I pulled my rental car into the parking lot of a (strip) club. A rough looking guy came up to us and asked if we had a couple of dollars. He said he'd make sure my car was "ok".
I took that to mean, "give me money or I'll put a dent in the rental and you'll have to pay the $500 deductable before leaving town". We all gave him a couple of dallars each and told him to get something to eat. When we came out of the club he was hanging out in the parking lot still. He walked up to me and said "See, I didn't let anyone mess with it". I thanked him thinking he was joking. Then he said, glad you guys weren't in there much longer, I'm really getting hungry. And then he started walking down the street toward the Stratosphere Tower.
Did he really stay in the parking lot to protect my rental? I have no idea. Maybe he had just finally made enough money and we just happened to come out as he was leaving. But, I like to think that he was sitting right there, protecting my little rental, saving me $500.
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