My Journal

Crumbs

***Last night I spoke at my local library. Their story hour spot is a cozy, circular, yurt-like space in the middle of the room–I could easily live there.  I talked a little about how much libraries have meant in my life, but I didn’t share one memory that came to me just then: how surprised I was as a child to learn that books came in “copies”.  For a long while I assumed that each book I read was a singular thing all unto itself.  I think I also assumed that it existed solely for ME.   What a little eg0-maniac I was!

***The day before yesterday, a gorgeous sunlit October day, a deer visited my backyard three times.  The first two times I quick-quick shooed him away from my garden.  But the third time I wondered: could he be here to deliver a message?  And are deer the new frogs–if I kissed him…?  We had a staring contest, but I got bored and shooed.  I’ve had my eye out for him since, but either he’s turned into a prince or found a more tolerant gardener.

***Speaking of gardens: my tomato plants look like death warmed over (as my mother would say) but tiny yellow, pear-shaped fruit continue to ripen.  The chard is doing its rainbow thing, but the beets are in a terrific sulk.  Next week is Official Garden Clean-up Day, and I’ve got my hay all ready for tucking the plot in for the winter zzzzzz.

***I’m in three book groups, which is ridiculous, but last Sunday night one group discussed Tea Obreht’s startling novel, The Tiger’s Wife.   I’d read and reviewed it months ago when it came out, but I was happy to give it another look.  The last page has, to me, some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever read.  It’s about the tiger, far and away my favorite character, and it reads in part, “He is the hunter of stag and boar, a fighter of bears, a great source of confusion for the lynx, a rapt admirer of the colors of birds.  He has forgotten the citadel, the nights of fire, his long and difficult journey to the mountain.  Everything lies dead in his memory, except for the tiger’s wife, for whom, on certain nights, he goes calling, making that tight note that falls and falls.  The sound is lonely, and low, and no one hears it anymore.”