Me, Trying My Best

[thisnewday]

I think I've been looking for the book that's going to save me. Even though I know that no such thing exists. I also think that I'm over the romance novels. Thankfully, I guess. And I don't want to say that with malice or prejudice because they helped me for awhile and I think there's probably some that are worth reading. If not to me, then to someone else.

So tonight, after picking up my grandson from varsity soccer practice and dropping him off at his mom's, I stopped at Tar-jhay on my way home and browsed their slim selection of books. Just, you know, in case. And a few minutes there seemed to confirm what I thought I'd been feeling. That it's time to move on.

What I did find--pick up, put down, then come back to--was Amor Towles' A Gentleman in Moscow. It had been a selection of the book club I belong to during one of the months when I didn't attend. And so I'd never read it. And picked it up tonight.

I did that knowing that it's not going to save me. That it's not going to set me heart a-flutter with predictable romance, contrived heartbreak, and yet another inexplicably unsatisfying "happy ending." Which is probably a good thing because the last time my heart was a-flutter they sent me to the cardiac care unit.

Anyway, I know this book will have none of that. Nor will it transport me back to that room full of bookish friends.

It'll just be me and the book. With me, trying my best to be my own friend...

LPK
Dreamwidth
9.27.2019

Comments

[bluecatartist]

thinking of you, L.

D.

[thisnewday]

Thanks D...

[rosegardenfae]

I think it has to start with being our own best friend. Once we really love ourselves, we are able to love others more fully.

Oddly enough, I'm atvthe point in Martha's travel memoir where she is in Moscow, 1972. She finds it very unappealing.

Hope your book is a great read.

[thisnewday]

You know, the book promises to be very interesting even though I'm only 30-some pages into it. But I'm feeling the same sort of need to understand the social, cultural, and historical context of it as I did when reading the fictionalized account of Ms. Gellhorn's role in the Spanish Civil War.

Which would be a good thing if I actually got off my dead a$$ and did some serious reading about it--in this case the wars and political upheavals that convulsed Russia during the early 20th century.

Once again, it just pi$$e$ me off that I didn't somehow avail myself of a better education in the years when I should've been doing that...

[rosegardenfae]

Once (long time passing) I spent a summer reading books about Russian in that time frame, mainly because I was interested in the Romanov's maybe.

Ah education. I think about that a lot. What if I'd gone to college instead of getting married? As wild as I was back then what could I have gotten into in 1964-68? As it ended up going to college in my 40's and beyond I was really into gobbling up knowledge. I do wish I had considered art as a major, but I did get to read so many great works of literature.

But, look at us. Both of us continue to educate ourselves through reading. I figure we are doing the best that we can and maybe even having a good time of it.

Finished the Gellhorn memoir which wins hands down among the 3 books I have read so far. Now having a hard time separating myself from dear Martha (oh what a delightful bitch) and may order something else she has written.

[thisnewday]

You know, I've come back to this comment innumerable times, thinking I'll finally reply to it, and I walk away yet again intending to think about it j-u-u-u-st a bit more before I say anything.

And I think where I'm getting stuck is at your second paragraph where you say, "...what could I have gotten into in 1964-68?" And it's finally occurred to me that this is precisely the way I feel about my entire life.

I've even mentioned this dilemma to my 16-year-old grandson, framing it as, "The most disturbing conclusion I've come to about my life is that, after 75-plus years, I still can't definitively say how I'd have lived it differently. Only that I'd really, really want to."

And maybe that's part of what drives my reading, the need, the desire to answer that question...

[rosegardenfae]

I'd only want to live my life over if I could know where my second chance choices would lead me. Maybe what I think were the "wrong" choices actually led me down a better path than the one I have traveled. I suppose that woukd be cheating though. Lol

If what I'm reading has a special magic, it allows me to experience an endless number of life choices, like being Martha Gellhorn or Gandhi, dancing on Mars or hiding from Nazi's.

Do you think you'll find the life you wish you'd had in your reading?

[thisnewday]

"Do you think you'll find the life you wish you'd had in your reading?" Nope, my greatest, most desperate hope is that I'll escape the life that I DO have through my reading, LOL.

What I've been doing lately, to try to figure that out, is to fantasize those possible lives in the moments before sleep. But so far the successful melding of a life in the machine trades and playing lead mellophone in Drum Corps International has escaped me.

I know it sounds like an obvious pairing, though, so I'm gonna keep working on it...