A book for B

My friend Cindy has a little boy who turned 1 in May. She asked me if I'd like to make him a book. I said YES. Here is the result. My friend Laura helped me, so she's the official editor :)

Book Quotes: Trail of Crumbs

For the last week I've been reading Trail of Crumbs. It's quite a departure from the latest books I've read: GRE books, Vampire books and a book about Savannah.

For the most part, I really like Kim Sunee's writing style, and many of the things she describes touch me. These particular lines perfectly describe what I think/feel:

I think I wanted routine and order, things my parents and people like Joachim had tried to teach me but knew I'd never be good at. Maybe I wanted the illusion that if I had control over the timetable of my life, I could avoid emotion and the uncontrollable details like sorrow and love and absence.

Seriously, I think that explains really well why I like having my Monday salsa nights, occasional volunteering, and helping with classes at Sur La Table. Together with having dinners with friends, traveling, and visiting museums, these are the things that I can control, that give structure and meaning to my life. And these are also the things that allow me to forget (ignore?) for the time being other aspects of my life that worry, concern, or scare me.

Oh how perfectly this describes me!!!

Here's a passage from Twilight, a book Stacey highly recommended and lent to me.

That had always been my way, though. Making decisions was the painful part for me, the part I agonized over. But once the decision was made, I simply followed through--usually with relief that the choice was made. Sometimes the relief was tainted by despair...But it was still better than wrestling with the alternative.

How do I get better at making decisions? How do I minimize that period of agony? How do I alleviate the despair that exists even when the decision has been made?

Two Murakamis

When I traveled to San Francisco in August, I fell in love with a painting I saw at one of the galleries. The painting, the image is seen below, was by an artist named Murakami.

Months later, I was impressed when I found out that Murakami is also a well known author and really enjoyed reading one of his books: After Dark. Some people are just multi-talented!

Well, surprise, surprise! Reading New York Times today, I realized that these are actually two different people: the artist is Takashi Murakami and the author is Haruki Murakami; as far as I can tell they are not related. Perhaps Murakami in Japan is the same as Smith is here (hi, Jenny!).

Book Quotes/Food for thought

From The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Flinn

"I got lucky. While I was on vacation, I was laid off, fired, or whatever they want to call it. Thank God. I don't know if I had it in me to quit. A gilded cage is still a cage, just the same, but I might still be there, putting up with it."

Book Quotes

I was reading The Gum Thief when Anna told me about Manless in Montclair. Sister knows best, right? Plus, Anna's friend Laurie also loved the book, so I decided to stop reading what I was reading and get Manless in Montclair from the library and give it a try.

Sadly, I was disappointed. Maybe I've just read too many books lately about women 30 y.o. and older going through a horrible life event or setting out on a self-finding journey and finding The One at the end.

Nonetheless, there were a few lines in the book worth thinking about:

I spent most of my late teens and early twenties moving quickly, eyes tightly shut, through life's numerous rough spots. If you couldn't see your problems, then you didn't have to deal with them. It took Michael's more gradual pace to finally slow me down.

Michael didn't make me whole by "completing me;" he made me whole by believing in me. His love and faith enabled me to begin the work of completing myself.

One does not laugh because one is happy; one is happy because one laughs.

Just living, I thought, could be suffieciently painful. I didn't need to chase any extra heartache from Charlie.

The secret of surviving was to embrace the change instead of running from it, to trust that magic was still possible even though it was sometimes buried under considerable amounts of pain and debris.

Book Quotes

Sometimes when I read a book, I carry a set of post-it notes with me so that I can mark interesting sentences. I then retype those sentences, and even if I never go back to re-read them, I am glad knowing I have them stored in my computer.

Because I now have this blog, I thought I'd just type them up here.

Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Despite all the buzz, or maybe because of it, about this book, I did not love it. In fact, I stayed in bed today in the morning and just made myself finish it. But there were still some gems in the book, and I'm quoting them below)

Om Namah Shivaya: I honor the divinity that resides within me.

...and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Ham-sa: I am That

I've been a puppet to this and to millions of other small and large signals of pain or pleasure throughout my life. Whenever something happens, I always react. But there I was-disregarding the reflex. I was doing something I'd never done before. A small thing, granted, but how often do I get to say that? And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?

Every time a diminishing thought arises, I repeat the vow. I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore.

Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert.

Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline.

And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

It is strange and true that sometimes intense emotion can cause us to respond to cataclysmic news in exactly the opposite manner logic might dictate. This is the absolute value of human emotion--joyful events can sometimes register on the Richter scale as pure trauma; dreadful grief makes us sometimes burst out laughing.

To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.

...and I wonder if I am capable of being somebody's sun, somebody's everything. Am I centered enough now to be the center of somebody else's life?

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.