Experiences

Watching a commercial for the Kind.le last night, I was struck with a sense of sadness. Although wistfulness might be more accurate. Stylistically appealing and positive, the commercial ends with the tag line "The book is back."

As much as I love my gadgets, I'm still primarily a hard copy reader. I'll take the physical book over the ebook any day. (Although I do have many of my favorites in both versions!)

What struck me about the commercial, is what is being lost in this switch to the electronic format. Books and libraries and bookstores have always been such a large part of my life. To this day, the trip to the library or to the bookstore is filled with a sense of youth and joy and expectation. The discovery, the wonder of rooms full of books. The endless, overwhelming possibilities.

How I remember those summer days when friends and I would bicycle to the library. I remember the Florida heat and humidity and daytime stillness almost as if I'm there now. That blast of cool air as we entered the quiet of the library. Running my fingers along the spines of the books as I hunted for the next one that would whisk me away. Then, finally, the excitement of finding it, the satisfaction in pulling it off the shelf.

Wood Pigeons

How strange that an article on wood pigeons would so recall the past, and make me falter as I read aloud.

Last night, trying to ignore the fact that my heart had decided to move into my head, I put on my headphones and listened to the audio book version of "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier. In spite of the throbbing heart beat bouncing between my ears, the pressure, the noise of said heart beat, the ice pack over my eyes and the heating pad on the back of my head/neck, my mind latched onto this section early on in the book; this sentence in particular, coming as it did after an article in a magazine catapulted the heroine into her past. It made me remember a split second when I was in Paraguay, doing something as inconsequential as hanging my laundry on the line to dry, when my happy-as-a-lark mood was overtaken by a pang of homesickness so sharp I had to stop for a minute. To this day I'm not sure what caused it. I really was in a good mood...I can still see that moment, the clear blue sky, the sunlight, the green of the trees and grasses and colors of the flowers. I can still feel that moment; how happy I was, how nice the sunlight on my face felt, how lighthearted the breeze brushing past me seemed. The sudden sharpness of the homesickness. It might have been the peace of the moment, the sound of a child's laugh or a call from one person to another across the yard that made me remember lazy summer afternoons and weekends as a pre-teen/teen, when I could lay on my bed in my parents house and hear the distant sound of lawn mowers and kids playing outside...Sunlight and air and people, all wrapped up into one big package of home and safety. Just one of those weird overlapping of moments, I suppose. But laying there in tears, (have I ever mentioned I'm pathetic when I don't feel good?) and waiting for something to make my heartbeat get out of my ears, that paragraph and sentence, that little remembered moment, did the trick. That's the last bit of the book and the last thought I remember before falling asleep. Strange, that.