books

You are currently browsing articles tagged books.

Walking out in the rain today, I stopped in at the library for shelter and grabbed a book off the “Staff recommends” shelf: High Tide in Tuscon by Barbara Kingsolver. Below is an excerpt of the first essay. It was just what I needed. I’m often blessed by the God of Books.

A hermit crab lives in my house. Here in the desert he’s hiding out from local animal ordinances, at minimum, and maybe even the international laws of native-species transport. For sure, he’s an outlaw against nature. So be it.

He arrived as a stowaway two Octobers ago. I had spent a week in the Bahamas, and while I was there, wishing my daughter could see those sparkling blue bays and sandy coves, I did exactly what she would have done: I collected shells. Spiky murexes, smooth purple moon shells, ancient-looking whelks sand-blasted by the tide. I tucked them in the pockets of my shirt and shorts until my lumpy suspect hemlines gave me away, like a refugee smuggling the family fortune. When it was time to go home, I rinsed my loot in the sink and packed it carefully into a plastic carton, then nested it deep in my suitcase for the journey to Arizona.

I got home in the middle of the night, but couldn’t wait till morning to show my hand. I set the carton on the coffee table for my daughter to open. In the dark living room her face glowed, in the way of antique stories about children and treasure. With perfect delicacy she laid the shells on the table, counting, sorting, designating scientific categories like yellow-striped pinky, Barnacle Bill’s pocketbook… Yeek! She let loose a sudden yelp, dropped her booty, and ran to the far end of the room. The largest, knottiest whelk had begun to move around. First it extended one long red talon of a leg, tap-tap-tapping like a blind man’s cane. Then came half a dozen more red legs, plus a pair of eyes on stalks, and a purple claw that snapped open and shut in a way that could not mean We Come in Friendship.

Who could blame this creature? It had fallen asleep to the sound of the Caribbean tide and awakened on a coffee table in Tucson, Arizona, where the nearest standing water source of any real account was the municipal sewage-treatment plant.

With red stilleto legs splayed in all directions, it lunged and jerked its huge shell this way and that, reminding me of the scene I make whenever I’m moved to rearrange the living-room sofa by myself. Then, while we watched in stunned reverence, the strange beast found its bearings and began to reveal a determined, crabby grace. It felt its way to the edge of the table and eased itself over, not falling bang to the floor but hanging suspended underneath within the long grasp of its ice-tong legs, lifting any two or three at a time while many others still held in place. In this remarkable fashion it scrambled around the underside of the table’s rim, swift and sure and fearless like a rock climber’s dream.

If you ask me, when something extraordinary shows up in your life in the middle of the night, you give it a name and make it the best home you can.

I hope you get a chance to read the rest of it. To me, it spoke about my current search: to find a life, a place, a home that fits my inner tides.

Related posts

Tags: , ,

I woke up this morning from another night of strange dreams and all the thoughts that had been swirling around in my head, many from reading The Geography of Bliss, came together into one clear thought: There are many ways to live, I’m going to live happy

It suddenly all seemed so clear!

Yes, its similar in simplicity to my “eat when your hungry!” epiphany.

Related posts

Tags: , , ,

There are a couple things about this book that are making me jealous.

#1 That I didn’t think of it! 

#2 “The dole.”

From the book:

Before we get into the ins and outs of budgets, mortgages, credit cards, and all that kind of  stuff; let’s make three things absolutely clear: 

• You are not going to be destitute 

• You are not going to starve, neither are your family 

• You are not going to be homeless 

Thank God we live in a Western European society. We have a social welfare and health system that will look after us. It mightn’t be perfect, but it’s still a blessing that we should all be grateful for. We should thank our lucky stars we live in Ireland and not an impoverished third world country where people starve for the want of bowl of rice.

Yeah… thank God we don’t live in a country where if you lose your job, you lose your healthcare! Or could become homeless! I mean THAT would really suck. Thank God we don’t live somewhere like the U.S., err… I mean, an impoverished third world country.

Other than that little, non-United States applicable encouragement, the book seem very helpful so far.

Download your free copy of Oh No: I’ve Lost My Job What Am I Going To Do? here. Today only!

Related posts

Tags: , , , , , , ,

« Older entries