The Book Nerd strikes again & A Visit to Fahrenheit Books

By the time I was in third grade I was a good reader. And I read vociferously. I got a book each month from the book of the month club but that was hardly enough to keep me satisfied as I often had that read before the weekend had ended. Reading was my whole world and my greatest memories from my childhood are of the books I read, most often deep into the night, long after a ten or eleven year old should have been tucked safely between sheets with the lights long out.  

Driving downtown to a favorite bookstore

Typically girl, I read about horses and dreamt of horses and wanted to own a horse. A friend of mine had a horse and she loved reading about horses so once in a while we got together at my house had a sleepover so that we could read out loud to each other, late into the night. 

Fahrenheit Books is on Broadway-- just north of Alameda. 

As I grew older, my fantasy of owning a horse lessened but reading still played a central part in my life, 

Send in the Clowns

She basks in the light as though the moon has turned it's eye on her alone and left the rest of the world unlit. Her face is rent with sadness and a waterfall of tears has gathered at her feet. Words pour forth as she shares her heart's brokenness with the few hundred who spectate on her sorrow and she moves forward to gather them into her grief. Her woe moves into agonies that stir the hardened beholder to near tears themselves as the soliloquy reaches its desolate orgasm. A pin dropping would be ashamed to have broken the stillness and the actress bends forward to weep in the fading spotlight...

The silence is deep and profound and appreciative of the moment so the actress doesn't move, patiently awaiting the bone crushing response such performance is due.

Silence.

She peers up from her pose on the wooden floor out into the dim faces of her audience to find their gaze intently on her, yet mute and motionless.

The curtain lowers, slowly hiding their watchful stares and the stillness of the nearly full auditorium continues as the chains and actress hit the floor as one. "Don't they get it?" Rising, she moves quickly to where she can fix her stare on the stage manager who tiptoes back into the darkness, abandoning curtain and call for safety. "Don't they understand what they saw? Can't they acknowledge it and show some appreciation?" She spins toward her fellow cast members. "That was great." No questions asked. "Don't they get IT?" As a group, the thespians scuttled back to their dressing rooms to avoid the possibility of flying props or tossed tools. They knew their leading lady too well...

As they scamper from view, the diva pivots in uncertainty then pauses, pregnant with idea. She walks to the corner of the curtain, yanks it back and thrusts herself back out onto the lip of the stage, the crowd restlessly poised for departure.

"What is your problem?" Her voice is perfectly trained to reach the uppermost seats under the balcony. "Don't you understand what you saw here tonight? Don't you get it?" A few faces turn toward her, smirking slightly, then turned to follow the rest of the exiting crowd. "Are you so stupid?" At her full voice the windows rattle threateningly. "I am fucking good and That..." she gestured back towards her final moment. "deserved a standing ovation, I think. Don't you think?" The crowd moves more quickly with each word, pouring through narrow doors with an urgency that speaks volumes. "God damn it, would someone answer me? Don't you get it? The silence is killing me! Was I really that bad?"

The final question, overflowing with insecurity and fear, catches a young man's attention just before he herds out of the building. He pauses and looks back at the wannabe starlet exposed as a child longing for attention. "You're the one who doesn't get it," he steps a foot or so forward so he will be heard. "We were moved beyond words... beyond applause. It seemed we had been allowed into the privacy of your soul... clapping seemed a mundane response to the moment. We didn't respond because we didn't want to intrude. You were wonderful, you stupid cow. And now you've ruined it all by screaming for applause." Then he turned and walked swiftly out the door as she puddled to the floor...

The alien

For months you were an alien inside me

unfurling and moving of your own accord

indifferent to the space you'd invaded

taking over as though it were 
your kidney to recline upon

your lungs to kick

your stomach to raid

expanding as though 
into the eternal

heedless of the limits of time...

or space 
-my space-

And you dwelt there

all at once 
mine

and not mine

in the sacred dark of my womb

Until the day arrived

-was it really so many years ago?-

that it was time to awaken unto the world

to find your humanness

You were wrinkled and pink

bent and battered

a Mr MaGoo face

angelic to a new mother's embattled gaze

At first it seemed you still belonged there

in the warm cocoon of my center

I held your smallness and recall

that strange oneness

Yet quickly you gain your foreignness

your otherness

You roll away from me

so that you can crawl off

and walk into the next room

and run outside

and peddle to your friend's home

where you will get in a car and drive off to meet your friends
and steal your first kiss in the backseat of your new car

then fly off to see the world

In a blink of an eye you are an alien outside of me

with a life that has little to do with me

Yet still you are the alien

whose nose I blew

whose vomit I washed off myself

that I held in the dark nights in the hospital

that I fretted over when the oxygen wouldn't flow

that I frowned at when your words were too cheeky

whose grades I fussed over each report card

that I yelled at when you sauntered in late

that I love

Ode to Fall

Delicately dancing in, the fall began with colors splashed about like a child had spilled bits of paint.

 

One can almost imagine the imp dancing about, a bucket in one hand and paint brush in another. While bending over to quietly paint a leaf at the top of the tree, turning to and fro, angling this way and that, the bucket wobbles and bobbles, tips and tilts, and with each jolt a dollop of paint slops over the edge of the pot and onto the nearest leaf so that soona leaf here, a limb there, reds and ambers, gold, mustard and maize begin to appear amidst the lush green growth that have been with us for for the breath of a time called spring and summer.

 

 The days are yet temperate and we take advantage of the lingering sunlight for lengthy walks.