Forgive me, I’ve had two glasses of wine.
I wonder if my teeth are they were in Ohio–purple and smiling. I drank a lot of wine that summer in Ohio and I became very accustomed to that drunk: a wine drunk, rich with joy and forgetfulness, very different from the torrents of drunk I would have from Gin and Orange Juice. Of course, I was in love both times and was probably trying to escape something; or, I was young, or both.
I had a plan tonight: Call my sister, Kelly, and pose a question; here’s how I think it would have gone:
“Kelly, ask me what I love more than anything besides friends and family.”
Kelly would be chasing a kid or peeling a potato or just simply living the American dream and would not know, or pretend not to know.
“Books. That’s what.” And she would say, “Ah, yea, I could have guessed that.” But could she have? Growing up, I didn’t read much. Sure, I had the Roald Dahl fascination, but I was mostly concerned with the way books lined up on a shelf, the way they added up to something as a whole and what it might have meant to have read all of them. I remember sitting up at night in my friend Craig’s room, looking up in his closet at the shelf above his clothes. There was a whole line of books and it was rife with adult classics and I assumed he just must have read all of these and I was in awe. I said, there’s no way I’ve read this many books and he just kind of laughed–Craig had it figured out–and said, sure I have. Well, I think Craig was wrong, but he had good intentions.
When I need a break at work, I go into a small room with a built in desk and kick off my shoes and put them up and adjust my sitting posture and open up a book and read. The world goes on outside and it’s not like I can’t hear it, I can. But I can ignore it or soak it up or even appreciate it, in those moments.
I want to read all of Sue Grafton’s Alphabet novels. These started in 1982 with “A is for Alibi” all the way up to “V is for Vengence” which I think came out in the last few years–that’s something, that series. Mystery novels with the same detective, but I would like to be a completist and read them all. Of course, I own all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, I suppose I could begin there. If it’s good enough for the BBC, then it’s fucking good enough for me!
My therapist said an interesting word to me the other day: “projection”. I had heard it so many times, but never in connection with my behavior and it explained so very much!
I should be volunteering to help tutor kids to write.
I am off to bed, for now. A diary entry on here–who knew? I sure as hell didn’t.