ALICE’S BOOKSTORE (and Patty’s and Anne’s and Maria’s)

I truly believe that all my life is about waiting until I can have time to read. I wait all day, all week, all month, all year. I wait for breaks, lunch times, bus times, train times, little pockets to steal on a weekend afternoon and even when exhausted, just before I close my eyes, in bed. I even buy furniture so that it is conducive to an afternoon of curling up in the nooks and crannies of fabric to immerse myself in story.

So it is when I go on a vacation or have to travel anywhere that the first and foremost item to pack is always a book. I can finish a book on an airplane in one sitting. So depending on how long the trip is, it will certainly entail buying another book during the course of the time spent anywhere. In fact, the search for an appropriate bookstore is always a part of my itinerary of any travel plan.

That being said, I do go through dry periods, periods where I can’t pick up a book and need to clean the palette so to speak. I also don’t want to live my life from the jacket of a book cover. I need to enjoy life in all its fullness as well. Sometimes for all the books that are out there, there just isn’t anything I’m drawn to, to read. Often the reason I pick up a book is because I read a good review or that the name or author comes up in different things I’ve overheard or read in other places. If I start hearing a name or title over and over again at random, then my intuitive side kicks in and says, hey, maybe you should pick up that book.

I’m not very well read even though I do read. There’s many classics I’ve yet to pick up. I always thought I should have been an English Lit major in college. I was a minor instead. I should have studied writing. I should have done a lot of things. In any event, I notice that my bookshelves are filled with memoirs, biographies and certain fiction. I really enjoy science fiction but I don’t read enough of it. Same with mysteries. I don’t read enough of those even though I enjoy a good whodunit.

When I was growing up, I spent lots of time at my local library and it was a pretty good one I might add. I read F. Scott Fitzgerald, Agatha Christie, Rona Jaffe, Philip Roth, Sidney Sheldon, and my personal favorites, Woody Allen and Bennett Cerf. I read much of the 70’s fiction at the time. And I especially enjoyed the annual Best Plays series. It was sort of the Readers Digest of condensed plays. In my little Detroit town, that was about all I could get. I followed all the shows in New York and on Broadway. I knew who was acting in what parts. I used to write plays all the time growing up in school. I don’t know why I didn’t figure out I should have been a playwright or gone into theater in some way.

I didn’t really get into memoir until much later when I lived in New York. New York opened my eyes to a wide variety of culture. There was The Strand bookstore, very big and used and new and you could get lost in there for a whole day. This was back when they had Mom-and-Pop-owned bookstores and you would find your favorites in different neighborhoods and who would carry what. You would find those paperback books from different press houses, not the big guns, that had those generic looking covers with white borders and great titles or something that caught your eye about what the story would be about. It was like buying the independent films of books or something like that.

I then realized that I started to unconsciously read and be drawn to female writers. And oddly enough, female writers with “A” names, like Alice and Anne, and Madeleine. Okay, that’s not an “A” name but it rhymes…sort of. I bought Anne Tyler, Alice McDermott, Alice Hoffman, later on Anne LaMott, Alice Munro, Anne Sexton. Not unlike my musical tastes which also run toward female singer/songwriters with the same names, like Patty Larkin, Patty Griffin, Patty Smythe, Nancy Griffith (again, not a Patty but it rhymes…sort of).

So there are a number of things I’m trying to say here. One, that I’m obviously OCD but also that I don’t just read everything because I like to read. It takes me awhile now to buy a book just because I might go into a bookstore. I can’t buy more than two either. I used to come out with four or five at a time. Then I looked at my bookshelf one day and realized I was buying a wish list but not actually books I was going to read. Some of them are still sitting there with my good intentions still intact. There was a period a few years back where after I finished going through receipts for my tax return, I realized most of what I owed on my credit card were book purchases and most of those I hadn’t read. Now I frequent libraries more and I keep only those books that I feel I will read again and some of them I have read again and over and over and I get more out of them the second or third reading. Anyway, it’s the same rule that happens when you buy three CDs or more. Only two of them will be any good, the rest you won’t like. It’s a law, I swear. Always happens to me. I think that’s because you buy something you’re either not ready to hear yet and think because everyone has it you should too or it’s good intentions and wishful thinking because you want to really like jazz and want to expand your repetoire but hey, I gotta hear some Patty Griffin. And so you play it once while you’re reading the Sunday paper, never really listening to it and then it goes into the CD file never to be heard again. Until you move, then as you pack, you say, what’s this? I bought this?

Another thing is that I’m a firm believer in quality over quantity which means that just like going to see a movie, I want to read a book because I want to have that life changing experience where I have to get through it and can’t put it down. I don’t go see many films at all for that reason. I can’t come out of the cinema with an “okay” feeling. I have to be totally moved and enlightened or still laughing my ass off in flashbacks. That doesn’t happen often. I had a friend who constantly went to the movies and read books. And she was MARRIED!! She thought because I enjoyed to read too and was an actor and writer that I also loved going to the movies. Yes, I do but not every weekend. I do not read a book a week anymore. I live my life. Life is where the stories are which is why waiting to read or see something wonderful just enhances life and enriches it. That’s what I would love to be able to create if I could. In fact, I stopped hanging around her because it was boring. Geesh, let’s go jump out of plane lady. Get your head out of the book!

So it is with great pleasure that I offer up a book I’m in the middle of reading that is just that, enriching and life-enhancing. And her name is Anne! No lie. I swear I don’t look for these things. Anne Enright wrote "The Gathering" which recently won the Mann Booker prize, or vice versa, last year. I picked it up at a Borders in Chicago where I was traveling and bought furniture this past weekend. On my way to the O’Hare airport, we stopped in the Borders and I bought two! books only, the third being for my host (on a coupon). I had finished the one I brought with me and started in with Anne’s book. And from page one, I couldn’t put it down. I can’t really explain it either because the premise is so simple and it’s not a page turner in terms of plot and I sort of already figured out what the surprise was half way through but getting there was a joy to read. Her prose is marvelous. (And mine, well, trying to describe this book…sigh.)

Now this always happens to me too these coincidences if I’m reading or renting films. By the way, you can only watch two films at a time as well because the third will be a stinker. Okay, so anyway, I just finished reading an Alice Hoffman book about a boy and his sister and the sister is the survivor who loves and tries to save her brother and then I bought Anne’s "The Gathering" and within the first chapter, I discover that the story is told in the voice of the sister who’s trying to save her brother who has also died and committed suicide!!! Is that weird or what?

[As an aside: when I used to rent at the video store, I’d pick out the best double features and there was always some coincidence to them like the time I rented “The Mirror Has Two Faces” and “Michael” and both of the pictures ended with the main characters dancing down the street…in New York no less. And a great double feature I might add.]

One time, I was going to Chicago, same weekend, I go for my birthday a lot, and I happened to pick up "The Secret Life of Bees" for the plane ride there and I was traveling on my birthday. I started to read it on the plane and couldn’t put it down. About halfway through the book, the narrator, a female of about 13 I think if I remember, talks about her birthday being today, July 4. Okay, what’s going on?

Now another strange thing happened to me one day as I was looking through my bookshelves. That was the time I noticed I had a lot of Anne’s and Alice’s as favorite authors. What started me on the path of story and reading, was an aunt who was a schoolteacher who I didn’t get to know for very long, only 11 years of my life. When my sister and I were younger, my dad’s older sister, my Aunt Alice and her husband, Uncle Lawrence, used to visit us and bring a box of books, all new and inscribed by our Aunt. “To Maria, Love, Aunt Alice and Uncle Lawrence” in her perfect teacher script. I thought she had given me gold. I loved all the books, A.A. Milne and fairy tales and all kinds of other novels. All hardcover too. My Aunt Alice was a very well loved teacher who taught elementary, sixth grade. I remember her students at the end of the year which was her retirement year, gave her an autograph book signed by all of them telling her how much they enjoyed having her. I was always very proud of that. I remember she would write me letters on pink tissue-like stationary in her beautiful handwriting. She talked about taking communion and school and they were long letters and very beautifully written. I wish I could have appreciated that more then but I was so young. She died at 67 from a long illness which she fought hard to recover from. I remember my parents telling me that she had only two-thirds of her stomach left because of the ravage of that disease. But she left such an imprint on me and a legacy that to this day I now understand. And I looked at my bookshelf that day and said out loud, gee, that’s funny I have all these authors named Alice and Anne. Why is that? And some voice from somewhere said to me, because of her, because you’re a writer.

I see, said the blind woman. And that’s why I read. I read to enrich, enjoy, entertain and enlighten myself. But, mostly, I read because I write. I am a writer.

Thanks, Auntie Al. xo

I Really Am Too Old For This Sh*t!

I am going to be 46 in two days. (Yes, it’s the Fourth of July: insert your patriotic, holiday joke here. And yes, I am quite the firecracker and proud of that.) Yeah, yeah, it’s just a number; I’m still young; I don’t look 46 at all; I’m healthy, strong, beautiful. All of that, yes, I know. And of course, I’m going on my 6th 39th year, a record somewhere.

As a woman, I’m not supposed to tell my age. As a woman in the entertainment industry, I’m really not supposed to let anyone know my age. But I always tell people anyway. In part, because I like to see the look on their faces because I don’t look anywhere near 40 much less 46 and because I have to say it out loud once in awhile to remind myself. I don’t feel like 46 although I don’t know what 46 feels like. If it feels like this then I’m doing okay. I can still dance, yoga, run, walk, hike and all that stuff. One of the young office employees here said to me last week, “I have to tell you, you are in great shape.” I nearly fell over. Really? I am at least 10 pounds heavier than I’d like to be and have been doing my daily regimen in hopes of keeping myself toned and my stamina high. My daily dose of yoga, walking and a two mile run is also to keep me mentally and emotionally fit. I can’t tell you what going without yoga for two days does to my peace of mind or whatever little of it I’ve cultivated over the years. Nevertheless, I was very pleased she commented on my fitness. It also forced me to maybe admit even though I’m not my perfect petite size 2 anymore, I’m still quite fetching and I’m doing something right. In fact, I don’t know what size I am anymore. I have to factor in water retention days when I try on jeans which I seem to buy every other week. I know of no other clothing item that is so ridiculously uneven in size depending what designer you’re trying on or whatever other cheap brand happens to be out there. Sometimes I’m a size 6 and sometimes an 8. Sometimes the size 6’s get smaller in the wash. Add to that, that I would live in jeans if I could and wear them to bed and at the same time, being in a 6 or an 8 makes me feel fat, I could just throw up my hands to the whole deal and surrender to the fact that deep within middle age I may not ever enjoy wearing a pair of jeans again. Please say it isn’t so.

But this is what I really enjoy because now I can say it and know I’ve earned it. I say all the time, “I’m too old for that shit.” It’s great! It’s so great to be too old to give a crap about keeping up with everything and everyone. I don’t even care anymore. I stopped caring when I turned 40 I think. I looked around one day and realized that some things that were goals in my life I either wasn’t going to achieve ever or that I didn’t care about it anymore. And it was quite the relief. It’s not that I’m not up for adventure or that I don’t have goals still I’d like to achieve but I just don’t want to work so hard anymore. I felt like all I ever did was strive strive strive to get somewhere in my life. Most of time it’s felt like I was running in place or banging my head against a wall. At this point in my life, I don’t have anything to prove anymore. I already know all the talents I have and all the good things about myself and all the ways I’ve succeeded and failed in my life. The only thing left is just to be happy. Enjoy the journey I guess and take it one day at a time. So that’s what that means. The platitudes kick in at this time with a ferociousness.

I read a book review of a computer technician who has a bestseller, a work of fiction, his first ever novel being published and he’s 49. Then they listed all the major authors who really didn’t publish until they were in their late 40’s. So I see there’s time for me to do what I need to do creatively and maybe this is the best time for it. All I know is the kings are gonna come to me now because by golly I’m not spending one more dime and one more precious minute of my life chasing after them. Forget it. I’m too old for that shit. See? Comes in handy!

I always hoped I’d age gracefully. I never wanted to be one of those people who botoxed, surgeried or starved myself. I wanted to be one of those people who at 50 or 60 could look back on their lives and see how far they’ve come and felt confidence with themselves and in their lives and looked forward to an adventurous old age filled with companionship, family and travel. I always thought I’d feel okay about turning 40 or 45 or whatever. Today I find that I’m not so much yearning for my youth because it wasn’t that great. It was mostly troubled and anxious and filled with grief, loneliness and lots of unanswered questions. No, it’s not the old days I yearn for, but I yearn for the chance to live it over and embrace all the uncertainty and feel that boldness of risk again. I wish I could take the opportunities I’d missed years ago and try them again with the knowledge I have now. The knowledge that I’m smart and good and beautiful and good enough. The confidence and respect for oneself that comes with age, comes with living through personal tragedy and despair and having to pick yourself up many times and try again often times in the face of great humiliation and discouragement.

I think the greatest thing I can say about myself now is that despite everything, I have grown in self-love which is most important. I have compassion and forgiveness for myself that I couldn’t find years ago. Because without these things, you can’t really move forward. I’ve also earned the right to confidence and self-respect because I have worked hard and still do to try to have enough self-awareness about myself and my actions and thoughts to change what doesn’t work, what has brought me trouble and what I’ve attracted both personal and material. If I am responsible, then let me live the rest of my life in responsibility for what I still can become and let me honor the years lived and the years to come. So what is the point of lying or not giving account of my years any more to anyone? I’m too old for that shit.

So if you call on my birthday and I don’t answer right away, give me some time because I’m probably trying to pull on my size 6 jeans.