EmptyHighway

I intend to say something about this soon. Chastise me if I don't and if you care, and if I have failed to post something about it. I finished this two weeks ago and highly recommend it. More to come later. Matt Harlan, if you read this. You really need to read this.

This book brought my appreciation back for public libraries. You see, as many who read this knows, I am a book monster. I, like Nick Hornby, buy more books than I read and read more books than I've bought. But for some reason or other, over the past 10-15 years I spend most of my time looking at books in bookstores. Even at the lowest point in my income and when my pocketbook has grown wafer thin empty, one's liable to find me spending another 6$ on a book, that I'll read sometime in the next 5 years.

But heh, I'm a bit of a bibliophile (thanks Sarah)book-a-phile, so what does it matter really? Well, I've discovered it matters a great deal to my bottom-line of paying all my debts etc. So, now whenever I go into a bookstore I go armed with pen & paper, or I borrow some from the proprietors. And walk through the store making lists. I'm sure many of you have discovered this years ago, but humor me, and also hang in there eventually I'll say something more about this book.

Tracie is a list-maniac. She makes lists of things we have to do tomorrow, things to pack, grocery lists, lists of things she can do better, lists of favorite bands, etc. And I noticed she actually uses the damn things. Whenever I make a list I have a tendency to write things down and then, set the list on a park bench and walk off. Or, write out my grocery list and leave it on the kitchen table.

Real useful…Well, We frequent several bookstores in the Boston area, but a few weeks ago, actually a month ago to the day) we were in one of our favorite bookstores in Brookline, MA. Brookline Booksmith. Sounds innocuous enough right? Ah, then you my friend have never walked into that bookstore off a fresh paycheck and walked out with a hefty bag full of books. As I have.

So, to combat my tendency for rampant and belligerent consumption of books, I decided to take things into my own hands and always ask for pen and paper, whenever empty handed in stores of this ilk. So, I wrote and I wrote, and I wrote. And Lethem's Fortress of Solitude landed, squarely in the top 5 of the list.

A couple of days later, I meandered into the looming, unfriendly, architectural disaster, of the Copley branch of the Boston Public Library. And less than two weeks later I was back, handing the book back; this after a many year hiatus from libraries I'm back into the fold of loyal public library visitors, and it's saving me at least a couple of hundred dollars every few months (or it will, although I have to admit I spent about $40 just last week at the aforementioned consumer trap).

About Lethem's book. I think I enjoyed it mostly because I can relate to the kids experiences, albeit I didn't grow up at the exact timeframe or under the same context. Many of the same fears and guilt of being a white kid in a place and time of change and confrontation with the blank-awareness that you are X race and someone else is Y race began. A time when "a white boy in the open"="an opportunity to have some fun", brought a world of fear and angst up close and personal to create a new perspective on the world. One that turns the external facing gaze a little bit more inward a little bit less frequently when trying to understand the world around you and puts you up close and personal in one another’s shoes.

The setting and characters march along with brittle and furious melodious pace, and force you to come face-to-face with your own trials and tribulations and step back with all seriousness and laugh at the joy of it all. If you haven't read it, you should.

It's out. I've had it for several weeks. I finished reading it and now I hear it comes in many colors.

The binding and design appeals to my bibliophile side.

Please get it, read it, and comment. All I can say is..."The Specialist" by Alison Smith.

I've recently started reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche. Strange that it has taken me so long to get to reading this? When I attended the workshop this past summer (on art and creativity) we departed with a several pages of recommended books to read, this was on the list that the Bert and Bernadette provided (they lead the energy work part of the workshop).

Having only read 30+ pages I am by no means an authority on the book, but I strongly recommend that you read it. Sogyal Rinpoche breathes life into death and insight into our modern fears and inability or seeming lack of interest towards understanding or seriously thinking about death. Often, in recent years, I've been challenged by my own piece-meal understanding of death, and this book has startled me again into recognizing that I've slipped into a fairly mundane habit cycle and I can easily embrace life and death and begin living a more full and balanced life by seeking a deeper understanding of the impermanence of life and the stability of change. Change endures, despite our protestations. Silly me, silly us, to think we are individually that important.

At the workshop in Italy this past summer, I managed to live by these principals to some degree (unbeknownst to me). Or rather, I at least worried less about the mundane matters that tend to consume our lives back in the States (or any other part of the "civilized word").

There, I watched these 2 etching ink bags for hours, days, and weeks in our humble, productive, etching studio. At the time I thought I was learning to paint them, when in reality I was just learning to have attention on something, as completely and wholly as I was able. Albeit, I look back and I was quite an amatuer at it and probably will be as long as my practice doesn't match my time spent on other things. The funniest part of learning to pay attention to something, was that I completely failed to understand those objects. I stared intently at them, (and as Rose pointed out in my critique) I failed to pay attention to everything else. Hence, I didn't really even understand until this moment, that if you don't try and pay attention to the whole or at least give attention to the interdependance of the bags on me, and the environment and vice versa, then you'll never understand the bags.

My hope is stronger now. For one thing this book, and the workshop teaches me, change is constant. And as Gandhi once said, "You must become the change you seek in the world." Of course it can't happen today, but I can start today with me, one day at a time. One moment at a time.

I have become desperately tired of not being creative or productive enough this year (beyond the typing). While, I have indeed grown in knowledge, in other less timeless endeavors as painting or printmaking or drawing (in my case computer geekdom), I still feel an emptiness. Fortunately, this evening, after turning to the book, I was reminded that these feelings of emptiness are related to feelings of impermanence in this life. And henc, feelings I must seek to understand if I am to fully enjoy life.

If everything is impermanence, then everything is what we call "empty," which means lacking any lasting, stable, and inherent existence: and all things, when seen and understood in their true relation, are not independent but interdependent with all other things. The Buddha compared the universe to a vast net woven of a countless variety of brilliant jewels, each with a countless number of facets. Each jewel reflects in itself every other jewel in the net and is, in fact, one with every jewel.
-Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying p. 37

Of course this is me reading a book, and only in the beginnings at that, the ...becoming the change you seek... part is the challenge. The challenge for me has been to not idealize the workshop, and practice what I have begun to learn. Only in the practice will I begin to understand. I think this is part of that practice, but my hands are idle when it comes to painting or drawing, or assembling, or whatever it takes to express in physical form snippets of what I understand to be bit and pieces of my moments of life before death.

My dear friends Tracie, Justin, and Elizabeth (and about 15 others) are gearing up for the second workshop this summer, or rather they're gearing up to continue the hard work they've done all year, and become the change they seek.

I wish I could join them, I have the heart, I just forgot to do the planning and work, and set aside the savings required to get there. Albeit I won't idealize it, and I'll try and have my own personal workshop here, for the next...uh... I don't know, say 80 years maybe. But I'll start small, with the next 3 months. We'll see and i'll keep you up to date. I hope you'll do the same for me. Good night, or rather good morning, and I've lost an hour thanks to daylight savings.