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

Talking To An Intuitive

So, over the years I have consulted a number of intuitives on a semi-regular, annual, daily, hourly basis. Note I used the word, intuitive, and not “psychic.” Psychic, to me, implies a woman sitting in front of a crystal ball in a badly wallpapered dark room, wearing lots of scarves and jewelry, who may or may not have really bad teeth but definitely has, if not a large proboscis, then a large mole somewhere on her face taking on a life of it’s own. This mole may or may not have speaking capabilities but it’s there nonetheless making fun of you plunking down your 10, 20, 30, 50, 120 dollars to have someone tell you mostly crap you already know and nothing about anything important.

The only time I was ever scammed was when, at a time in my life when I was in a lot of pain and, of course, the most vulnerable, my mother took both of us to a woman she called after seeing her ad in a local newspaper. The woman lived in a house in East Detroit with her daughter and was of a Sicilian descent with a heavy foreign accent. She took my mother and I separately into her back room, turned over some cards and then proceeded to tell us that we were in a lot of pain and upset and we should return for another appointment and give her $75 so she’ll light a candle and be able to help us. Before we left the room, she made us both promise not to tell each other what was said in there or it would have dire consequences. Not knowing my mother and I, that was a really stupid thing to say to us because the first thing we did when we walked out of the house was ask each other, “What did she tell you?” And the only dire consequences of that appointment was the money we parted with to give to that charlatan.

My mother didn’t know the rule of finding a good psychic: ask someone else who they use. It’s like finding a good therapist, hairdresser, mechanic, plumber. You ask someone if they know anyone who is good. The problem here is that you don’t want people to know you want to talk to a psychic so you have to find someone who is a little out there like yourself to ask. Then again, I don’t want to really know anyone like me or who is out there or both, so it’s a little difficult. The good part is most people who have talked to a good intuitive will immediately want to talk about it. That’s when you pounce on the information.

About ten years ago, I got information from a friend about an intuitive who lives in New Jersey who conducts sessions over the phone. And she was a Reverend to boot. Well, that’s even better, a spiritually inclined intuitive, although most of the really good ones already are. About every 18 months I have been having sessions, about an hour, with this gal over the phone. She’s been on the money about lots of things and other things, hey, I’m still waiting. But whenever I veer off the path to talk to a new intuitive or a palm reader as I did a few times, I get the same information. And some misunderstandings. I’ll explain.

Most intuitives will tape the session so you have a copy of the reading and can refer back to it if you like. This is obviously to avoid misunderstandings about events that possibly may happen or not happen. Such as when I thought my reader said that I will meet a man who will have a lot of tissues. Which I thought was a little odd but then kept a watchful eye on the grocery paper product aisle at my local supermarket looking for any nice looking man who would waltz up and fill his cart with boxes of Kleenex. I kept this up until I received the tape of the session when I made out that the guy would have a lot of “ISSUES” not tissues on the tape. Then wondered what I would do with all the Kleenex boxes I posted around the house to create a positive aura. And just prayed that I would catch a really bad cold. Pretty much meeting a man with a lot of issues is not my idea of fun anyway so I steered clear of parties, social outings of any kind and became a recluse for a few months until I realized that I was the one with issues and hey, what man with or without issues was going to want to meet me anyway. I did end up meeting a man with issues and he seemed pretty nice until he showed me his army reenactment dolls and figurines in his basement set up on a football size field area for war games. The man was 35, single and a lawyer. Luckily I’ve had enough tissues to see me through the last three relationships I’ve had, including that one.

Then I get the innocuous “I see a new vehicle” reading. I think, great, until I realize, I don’t need a new vehicle. And she didn’t mention I would win money so this could be a good thing or a bad thing if you really think about it. I mean, what will happen to the car I’m driving now? Will I get in an accident, will I break down or will someone die so I can inherit money because I don’t have any money for a new vehicle? And is this new vehicle a new old or used vehicle or is it a really new vehicle? And is it an Echo or a 4 Runner? Five words just set me off in a full blown case of worries and anxiety.

Then they talk about things like your health and creative stuff and what to eat and what my job prospects are and quite frankly at this point all I want to know is when am I retiring and where. Get to the part where I make a lot of money okay? Marriage, vehicle, men with tissues, issues, whatever, I don’t care. How much money will I make and will I retire early, that’s all I want to know. They never have an answer for that. It’s always, life is what you make of it. Well, now, that’s intuitive, thanks and if I believed that I wouldn’t be consulting you. But deep inside I always knew that anyway. I guess I’m just impatient and anxious to get on with things. Like most of us are I guess. Except that’s just the point, you have to live in the moment.

Then again, there’s always my father’s frank and truthful philosophy: Aw, that’s a load of crap. Just be happy.

Yes, and let me see if I can’t get an appointment with my intuitive to tell me when I’m going to be happy.