​Today I had time to write
And dig into the archives
And to go down unexpected paths
And I even had time for a little admin
And taking the floof to the park (it was cold!)
And I took some time to read a book for fun
(The Telling Room, it’s about cheese
And northern Spain
It’s delicious)
And I went to bed feeling
Content.

You are on the upper west side
You walk past the second hand book store
And glance at the $1 trolleys and crates
Sitting on the sidewalk
A book with a yellow and red cover
Draws you in
The Telling Room
It is about cheese
The Wall Street Journal — according to the blurb on the back --
Says it is “a must read for all who think of Spain as magical, who consider cheese as the ultimate gift of love, who love stories of betrayal, despair, revenge and redemption.”
Yes please!

You go inside the store to pay
You're waiting for the customer in front of me to finish their purchase
You look out the window and
There is a real life fairy browsing the books!
Right there is broad daylight!
On Broadway and 81st!
She is wearing a tall, pointy felted hat
With a red rim and a thick strand of purple felt dangling from the top of the pointy tip
A rainbow colored ribbon tied in a giant bow under her chin
Secures the hat
And frames her wizened face
Her coat is also felted, red and orange stripes
And flecks of dark purple
The coat is lined with the same deep dark purple
Visible from her rolled up cuffs
The coat buttons are crocheted
She is smiling while she peruses the books

The cashier is ready
You look up and see
An old friend from camp
And his mom
His sister, her daughter,
Was one of my first campers
When you were a guidance counselor
A thousand million years ago
Before COVID, cancer, FoCo, London, Aaron,
Before Kris ended the engagement, before the camino, and
During your very first overseas adventure
Now that sister/daughter/camper
Is a Mumma of her own to a mischievous baby boy
We catch up on the sidewalk

Then it is chorus rehearsal
You're told you didn’t see actually see a fairy — it's Purim! 
You still choose to believe you saw a fairy
You sing in Hebrew
The music is challenging and complex
And beautiful
As you're leaving rehearsal
Your friend passes you a homemade
Hamantaschen filled with apricot 

Even though it is cold out
You feel warm
All the way home.

I finished Kerri Maher's novel several days ago
Devoured it is a better description
Couldn’t put it down
And I can’t stop thinking about it
Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier
And Paris in the 1920s and
And Hemmingway and Joyce and
The writing of Ulysses and
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and
Sylvia’s mother Eleanor
And sister Cyprian
The lesbians of the Left Bank
Stories of extraordinary women
So richly rendered
In an astonishing historical novel
That makes you want to travel back in time
To a place where
Bookshops encourage loitering and
Reading and discussion and
Art.

​What a luxury to get a massage!
And by a masseuse with magic hands
Who finds knots and tension you didn’t even know you had
And who when she’s done makes you feel
Like you have a new body
Lighter but more grounded
Relaxed
What is this feeling?!
The delicious smell of lemongrass
A lovely scent that makes you smile
With happy memories

And coming home to another truly glorious feast
And reading your book
That transports you back to 1920s Paree
And playing games
And cleaning the kitchen
And falling into bed feeling rested
And lovely.

That magical feeling
When you’re researching a thing
And it leads you to somewhere unexpected
And that takes you down more hidden paths
​To other things
The thrill of unearthing it all
And connecting the dots
And growing
What you know

"Dear"
From the old English deore or diore or dyre
Depending on whether you were Anglican or West Saxon
Or deurja in the Proto-Germanic, diuri in Old Saxon  
Dyrr in Old Norse and diore in Old Frisian 
All meaning:
Precious, valuable
Costly, expensive
Glorious
Noble
Loved, beloved
Regarded with affection

And sometimes it can be a bit snide 
Like "Okay dear" 
But here, I mean it nicely
Darling, precious, cherished, loved

In primary school
One of my teachers 
Had a regularly instituted policy called 
D.E.A.R Time
Drop Everything and Read 

Sometime in the day
She would announce 
"D.E.A.R Time!"
And we would stop whatever it was that we were doing
And choose a book
And read -
Isn't it nice that read and dear have the same letters? 
And it was my favorite part of the day
(Though back then I would've spelled it "favourite"
And "spelled" "spelt"
The Great Reading and Writing Challenge
Australia v. USA) 

I've missed reading books 
Reading for fun 
Just sitting and reading and not doing anything else 
Too much social media
Too much work
Too much being online 
Too many other Things To Do

So I'm bringing back D.E.A.R Time 
The past few days it happens to be around 11am
I grab my book
Snuggle up under a blanket 
Set the alarm for fifteen minutes
And just read
(Am currently devouring Index,
Delicious) 

When work picks up again
It's going to be harder to maintain 
D.E.A.R Time
Time is precious
Time is money 
Time is of the essence 

But I will try because
That time is
Precious, valuable
Costly, expensive
Glorious
Noble
Loved, beloved
Regarded with affection
Dear. 

Today I did something I haven’t done in the longest time
I checked out an actual physical book
From an actual in-person physical library
I walked into a row of books
Without knowing what I wanted
And let a book catch my eye
A bright yellow cover
Sometimes it is helpful to judge a book by - 

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure
from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age 
Peak delicious nerdery
How we organize and arrange
And find things
From searching scrolls
To the ease of Ctrl + F

But a physical book
The weight of it
The smell of it 
The joy of turning pages of it 
And finding it by chance. 

There are trillions upon trillions of
Stars in our universe,
Give or take, and
Millions upon millions of
Published books. 
I used to wonder
How has the world has not fallen off its axis
With the weight of all the books
We have written? 
How do we choose
Between the great volumes
Of words and pages and titles and texts
Which ones to read?
Choice, luck, happenstance?

One day at
Thirteen
My voracious bookworm self
Desired to read a good chunky book
I browsed the shelves
Of my school library
And came across
Sophie’s World
By Jostein Gaarder
A crash course in the history of
Western Philosophy
I remember walking the perimeter of the playground
Where we went camping
While reading it
It led to The Solitaire Mystery and Maya
A new way of seeing the world
Is it a coincidence that I would one day
Marry a philosopher?

One day when
I was seventeen or eighteen
Thumbing through the Sydney Morning Herald
A section called
“Can You Judge A Book (By Its First Page)”
(Or something of the like)
The first page of a book
Followed by a review
“Wooooooo-
hoooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash mush mash-up broke and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end.”
Ali Smith’s Hotel World
I would sporadically check the shelves in Dymocks
Fiction: Smi-
To see what else she had written
It made me want to write
My first published story was an imitation of its style
It led me to The Accidental and Like, and
Seventeen years later
Ali Smith is still writing and publishing and
I’m still reading every word

I don’t recall when I first came across Brain Pickings
Written/curated/nurtured
By the extraordinary Maria Popova
I think I was still in Sydney?
Or perhaps it was London?
The perils of the internet
Memory is different now
But at thirty-four
I read an excerpt of Popova’s Figuring
And knew it was another sparkling luminescence
I borrowed it from the library
And quickly realized I needed my own copy
It’s a brick of a book
I’ve lugged it around Manhattan and Brooklyn and Jersey
And even took it into the woods
The inter-weaving of science and art and literature and poetry
The stories of extraordinary women
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Margaret Fuller, Maria Mitchell, George Sand, Rachel Carson
The role of the artist/scientist/author 
To connect the dots
To illuminate
To shine 
To help us figure out who we are. 

​The delicious joy of seeing a well-crafted play
A world where language and literature
Rain and reign

Humans form new worlds
Out of rubble
Nothing more than bodies
Strips of fabric and wooden boxes
Splashes of light
Everyday objects are lobsters and caterpillars and creatures of the dark
Silky white rose petals fall from the sky
Are painted red by light
The musicians wet their lips and
Play

How art can rescue us in times of trouble
See us through
See through us

Worlds of make believe
Inside a concrete jungle
Full of trash and tourists
The glittering towers radiate supreme wealth
While fellow humans
Make beds of cardboard on the sidewalk