Words of Love

I spend a huge amount of time with my nose in a book. Old friends and family won't be surprised by this admission; I spent my childhood smuggling books into the shower (by pasting their covers with water I adhered them to the tiles), under my desk at school, and at the dinner table (not well received in many cases). In fact, I recently recalled a time when, disgusted with a conversation at a restaurant between medical students, I nonchalantly slipped a trusty book (I never travel without one) under the table and blocked out the offending parties with sweet fiction or perhaps some meaty philosophy. I love it all, from novels and history to religion and philosophy. Oftentimes the boundaries blur: what category can we delegate to Thoreau's Walden, or more recently, most anything by Alan Watts. Anyone who's had more than a five second conversation with me has probably been quoted John Steinbeck; between the covers of Travels with Charley to East of Eden, and everything in between, lies some of the most quotable wisdom that I've ever been privileged to pass along.
However, as I tote around anywhere from one to seven books in my bag daily, thumbing through them for inspiration, wisdom, or just an escape from whatever is going on at that moment, I've begun to look at this habit (some might use the word addiction) in a different light, thanks in some part to good ol' Alan Watts, who has been weighing me down as of late with a variety of good works. I've always known that my voracious reading has been a bit of an escape; from family, school, work, or now, parenting. Even as I read books about parenting, I am not actually DOING any parenting. Reading about enlightenment is different than being there for each moment of your life, and responding to each facet of your inter-web of experience. Reading about Walden is far different than setting out to live off grid in a cabin in the woods (we found this out the hard way, without Emerson to stomp along the path to shake us out of our pipe dream). Enjoying the wisdom of John Steinbeck is not the same as fully embracing the culture and times of Now. Certainly all of my wise and beloved gurus that live between the musty stiff covers, worn paperbacks, filmy leaves of fine laid paper dance with life as my eyes bring them into my realm of consciousness, regardless of the fact that most of my masters have long departed. I can't say how deeply the poetry of Walt Whitman has brought me to my true self, same as Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes or Claude McKay. I'd hardly be the same person without my beloved books, even as my spine curves from the weight of the bag I lug in hope of a free moment to snatch a quick phrase that might just unlock the secrets of the universe.
Alan Watts has a lovely, jolting and humorous way of 0f cementing his reader into their own present. His frames, like a photographer, capture an expanse that reaches through you and moves you to action. He's calling me to close the books, to taste the universe that I am unrelentingly fixed to, tethered to the filaments that hold each luminous being to one another, recognizing the extremely ordinary, miraculous state of being that we all share. Each morning, a new day. each breath, a new chance of filling my lungs. Each cloud, a reflection of the vast changing landscape that breathes us as surely as we breathe oxygen in to live. We are passengers aboard a living, breathing, loving creature. I'll probably always have a few books under my desk. I'll probably never stop quoting Steinbeck, or feeling my heart swell to capacity at the words of Sandburg or Whitman. I'll never give up my library card. And perhaps, in time, I'll add to the cannon of words that each one before me dipped into, like a never-ending spring bubbling up through the nerf-green moss-fern rocks, pooling into the clearest mirror so that all catch a glimpse of our revolving selves. The dipper is bestowed upon those who would look to humanity with eyes of uncompromising love, and would sacrifice their own thirst to quench the driest of their brothers and sisters.
What a friggin hippie I am! I have written words of love to the ancestors of the word. The marvelous moments come round again and again. Dip into the water, it will never leave you parched. Love each other. And put down your distractions...life doesn't stop each time we drop out. Though more than likely, when we meet again along the twisty path, I will be brandishing a dog-eared copy of something, anything, that delivers words of love to my seeking eyes.