Journal Entry
I have been reading Annie Proulx’s “The Soldier’s Tale” out of The New Yorker which I bought for $5.40 at a stray news stand.
I was at a Borders this past week. I have not been in a bookstore for a long time, not a large one. I stood in front of the bestseller rack and felt as if I were in a foreign country. I stared at the selection and surveyed what, in my head, was a cross-section of Americana. A new memoir by a “fat, mean girl,” an analysis of India and China, maybe a million references to elephants (Elephants meaning India, Elephants meaning Republicans, Fiction: Water for Elephants, etc.), a guide to men written by "an ex-bad boy" for women. I admit that I picked up the guide to men and leafed through it, also admit to making my friend at least a little annoyed because I refused to spend money on it but also couldn’t seem to put it down. He was hungry, “OK. I’m going to walk out this door. When you decide what to do, I will be outside.” I quickly put the book down and ran after him. Sometimes, drastic measures must be taken.
I doubt I would have been able to leave the bookstore on my own. While still inside and standing in front of the literary essays shelf, I picked up an Annie Dillard essay and thought about how I had never finished Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I looked at Joan Didion sitting next to her. I looked up at the new Michael Chabon hardcover and let my eyes wander down the shelf and remarked to my friend that being at this bookstore “makes me feel like a person who’s lost her religion.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just felt like saying it,” I replied. By which I do not mean that I was lying, only that I did not understand the sensation.
I have started almost every sentence with “I.” I think I have what people term heartbreak. It’s a feeling of only being able to hear or see things that are very far away. It’s as if everything is very far away. I read the newspaper to remind myself that the world is still populated. But sometimes when conversing, I feel my eyes wander, and then I’m seeing a road over the horizon or the lights above the bookshelves in the bookstore and that person’s voice is a clerk answering a question or the hum of a car on the highway.
This is from “The Soldier’s Tale,” “They sat frozen, like survivors in the aftermath of an explosion…The air vibrated.”
I was at a Borders this past week. I have not been in a bookstore for a long time, not a large one. I stood in front of the bestseller rack and felt as if I were in a foreign country. I stared at the selection and surveyed what, in my head, was a cross-section of Americana. A new memoir by a “fat, mean girl,” an analysis of India and China, maybe a million references to elephants (Elephants meaning India, Elephants meaning Republicans, Fiction: Water for Elephants, etc.), a guide to men written by "an ex-bad boy" for women. I admit that I picked up the guide to men and leafed through it, also admit to making my friend at least a little annoyed because I refused to spend money on it but also couldn’t seem to put it down. He was hungry, “OK. I’m going to walk out this door. When you decide what to do, I will be outside.” I quickly put the book down and ran after him. Sometimes, drastic measures must be taken.
I doubt I would have been able to leave the bookstore on my own. While still inside and standing in front of the literary essays shelf, I picked up an Annie Dillard essay and thought about how I had never finished Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I looked at Joan Didion sitting next to her. I looked up at the new Michael Chabon hardcover and let my eyes wander down the shelf and remarked to my friend that being at this bookstore “makes me feel like a person who’s lost her religion.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just felt like saying it,” I replied. By which I do not mean that I was lying, only that I did not understand the sensation.
I have started almost every sentence with “I.” I think I have what people term heartbreak. It’s a feeling of only being able to hear or see things that are very far away. It’s as if everything is very far away. I read the newspaper to remind myself that the world is still populated. But sometimes when conversing, I feel my eyes wander, and then I’m seeing a road over the horizon or the lights above the bookshelves in the bookstore and that person’s voice is a clerk answering a question or the hum of a car on the highway.
This is from “The Soldier’s Tale,” “They sat frozen, like survivors in the aftermath of an explosion…The air vibrated.”
posted by J. at 9:40 PM
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